Huntly Halloween and Hairst

There will be a class in the Tin Hut on Wednesday evening despite the ghostly goings-on and Saturday morning class will be on in the Library during the Hairst.

Scott will take the Sat class as I will be in London at Mark's Partnerwork Day.
Please note that entry to the Library is through the gate in McVeigh Street for 4 weeks while the work to put in a disabled access goes on.

A good Halloween and Hairst to all.

Full of heart

This is a carved natural wood sculpture at Scott's place.

Parachuting Birds

I have been working again over the past few months on lyrics and songs for Susumu Yokota, a wonderful Japanese producer. For the first time I was also commissioned to write lyrics to his melodies for someone else to sing, which was great fun, and totally different from how I usually write, as if I could be someone else for a day. Yokota's intentions and mood seemed clear in his music and it was like T'ai Chi on many levels, sticking to the intention behind the sounds and not working against them. Happily, he was delighted with the results and said they were just what he had had in mind. Anyway, I don't normally write about music here but Yokota has just emailed me a video of the person who is going to sing two of the songs, and it's so lovely an animation, and so joyful a song, that I had to share it with you, dear reader! Go watch it and the title of this post will make more (non)sense.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=EFTERKLANG&search=Search

Spring T'ai Chi Week Long Workshop

Here are the confirmed dates for the Spring week with Master Mark Raudva, all are welcome, get in touch. Folks are coming from the States as well as London, hopefully Ireland too, as well as locals from the 'Shire. Wonderful T'ai Chi, solo and partnerwork, with an inspiring teacher in beautiful surroundings. A friendly and inclusive atmosphere is at the heart of our way of working.
Near Inverurie Aberdeenshire, Scotland: 29th March - 4th April 2008, 2-5pm and 7-10pm daily £25/ £15 per day, bring food to share.
Local students can usually put visitors up, a contribution of £5 per night is suggested. Ta Lu session as usual the Friday night before. If we are 14 folks or less it is likely to be at Heather's studio. If we are more we will book one of the very local and lovely Fetternear, Kemnay, Monymusk or Wyness Halls.

Next Aberdeenshire workshops with Caro

On my next visit there will be a slight change of plan to accommodate a great Dance workshop that some students would like to go along to, details below. Here are my session times which are planned to be at Heather's unless stated, TBC. 121s are at Heather's or Paolo and Davina's. Please come along, all are welcome.
Thursday 15th 7.30-9.30pm regular Long Form group class -£5/ £3
Saturday 17th 7-10pm (at a hired hall, prob Inverurie) Northern Sabre Form - £10/£6
Sunday 7-10pm or ending later... replaces afternoon session -£10/£6
On Friday I plan to visit old friends in Findhorn and pick up a handmade large tea pot from the master potter at Findhorn Pottery. Most of you will have seen his beautiful heartful work when having tea at mine, and every now and then I try to get another piece. Here's a picture of one of his beautiful pots.

5 Rhythms Day is at 10am-5pm Banchory Guide Lodge, Sunday 18th November with Martin Julich £35/£25 . Contact him on dancefree.shiatsu@virgin.net

Robert Wyatt

A hero of mine, from The Guardian 18.10.07, on his new LP Comicopera, out on Domino records.

...The section's final songs are bleak and brutal, but gloriously so; extreme and committed songs born out of the specifics of the current troubles in the Middle East, but with wider reach. "I had this piece of music that was really busy; I hadn't got words. Alfie came in in tears one day. She'd been watching television, the battering of Beirut. The poignancy and awfulness of it. The word 'hate' comes into it, which is a very hard word to sing - as is 'love' - but 'hate' is even harder. On a record, you hope it's a transitory [state]. But bombing somewhere, waiting until the ambulances went in and then bombing that - fucking hell. It's not anything about the specific politics of the region. It's more about the horrible tangle that happens with the backwards and forwards of cycles of violence. I know it in myself. If someone's nasty to me, I'll be even nastier back, and then you're off. War is imminent."
Wyatt says his work is instinctive. "A French journalist asked if my music was spiritual, and I said, 'Only in the original sense of spirit meaning breath.' I am a breathing animal. If anything, I get lower, not higher, in art to work things out, relying on animal instincts to guide me through what sounds right. Beyond that, it's unknowable, verbally inaccessible." He adds, with characteristic self-effacement: "That's why I work with musicians."

Northern Lights Trilogy

If you have a moment go here: http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/ and choose your daemon! For those of you who have not yet read Philip Pullman's fantastic 'Northern Lights' trilogy, best do it now before the film of book one (The Americans have renamed it 'The Golden Compass') comes out 7th December. The books are so humane, moving and full of richness, that I rate them in my top ten fiction books. Be warned, the website is full of wonderful distractions, especially the aleithiometer, so make sure your boss isn't going to walk in whilst you are pondering metaphysical interpretations of symbols. Pullman hasn't written much since these books. Anyone know of a petition we can sign to get him to write more, and soon?

The Ten Suggestions (with apologies to Moses)

1. Be gentle with one another, especially at the moment when someone is being less than gentle with you.

2. Judgment and pontification are like wearing stupid hats. These hats are only impressive to other judgmental pontificators, who will engage one in lively debate. This is really only about comparing the size and magnificence of the hats. Leave the stupid hats to actual judges and the Pope.

3. Listen to the energy behind a communication, rather than the words / actions. We have heard this one so many times, and it's really difficult for those of us who have spent a lifetime cultivating words, 'saying what we mean' and trying to be clear communicators. Never mind, keep trying, even if you mess up. Have another go, fail better, as Beckett said.

4. Righteousness and self-righteousness are deadly. See: Iraq, Burma, China, Glasgow airport, gangs of Peckham, etc, etc, etc. When we think 'I absolutely know I'm in the right and they are wrong' then it's only a few minutes until war, confrontation, winners and losers, or simply ignoring the other's humanity.

5. Justifying one's grievances sucks. 'I only did that because I thought you were against me'. We all sometimes lash out. Take responibility for it, then make amends.

6. Even with the best of intentions, realise there can be misunderstandings. This works best starting with those closest to us where there's just the occasional blunder. The trick is to extend it towards folks who don't even seem to like you. Then it all feels a lot less personal.

7. Cultivate doubt. (Be wary of unquestioning faith). Be skeptical, especially don't take what you think or emotionally feel to be truths. Of course it's convincing! Pinch of salt. All people and things are conditioned and subject to change. Test things out in the crucible of ones own life. 'Place no head above your own' -Buddha.

8. Listen to plain song, or progressive rock music, or Stravinsky, or gamelan, or a cat fight, birdsong, your lover's heartbeat, traffic, the sea. We can tendrilise the world and all things in it with our listening. By this I mean out-reaching. We can also do this with our eyes, noses, sense of taste, our hands and all our skin, and also with our hearts and minds. Ears are really good to start with, though. Actively listen to a new or old thing. Reach out to it, meet it halfway and hear it transform. This creates a whole new thing.

9. Stop being so po-faced. In dealing with one's 'self', it helps to have a sense of humour. For those of us who started with only a vestgial ability to laugh at ourselves, this takes some work. But it can be done. If I can, anyone can.

10. Never, ever, give any credence to: lists, anything at all said on blogs or to the thoughts of strange women who like cats.

Make no claims.

Aberdeenshire classes this week

Just a reminder that the following classes are on this week:

Tuesday 7-8:30pm Alford Community Centre, Hut B
Wednesday 7:30-9pm Tin Hut, Gartly
Thursday 7:30-9:30pm Heather's

New beginners are welcome on Tuesday and Wednesday. Caroline will take the class on Thursday, looking at the Short Form. All Great River students are welcome.

Friendly neighbourhood cat

Likes to watch T'ai Chi, comes bounding when called, answers to pretty much anything, as I don't know it's name yet.

Northern Sabre

We had a wonderful evening of sabre practice on Saturday. Our thanks to Heather for leading the session so well and to Alison for getting us the great premises. Great stuff, girls...

Northern Sabre practice - Aberdeenshire

Anyone who has been learning the Northern Sabre Form with Caroline or Mark is welcome to come to our monthly practice sessions. These will be at 7-10pm at the Masonic Hall, 22 High Street, Inverurie AB51 3XQ on 6th October, 3rd November, and 1st December.
The hall is right next to a carpark, or is only a few minutes walk from the centre of town.

Pete asked me to do the Northern Sabre Form yesterday for his photo archve, as he hadn't built a "T'ai Chi patio" before.

Thanks to Pete

Yesterday Pete Machell finished his mammoth 8 week building work stint at my flat and headed back home to his home and girlfriend near Edinburgh. My brother Mike brilliantly suggested that Pete, his father in law, do the work at mine. He has worked completely on his own, often 10 hour days fuelled mainly by rooibos tea, kitkats and veggie thalis, as far as I could tell. From what was a musty beige carpeted flat he has created a space which is light and welcoming. Most importantly there is now lots of space for T'ai Chi both indoors in the lounge on the wooden floor he stripped (never seen so much dust in all my life) and outdoors on the purpose built stone patio. He has fenced the garden, painted, decorated, fitted a bathroom and generally put things up, taken things down and put things in order all over the place. Pete normally works in the Edinburgh area but will travel within Scotland for bigger jobs and I certainly recommend him. Thankyou so much Pete for putting your heart into my home, it's also been great to have you stay and get to know you more.
So it's time to sow vegetables, grow fruit and go skip diving. Soon I will advertise for lodgers, as soon as I have finished painting the last bits around the place, bought a TV and microwave (apparently these are considered necessary...) I am going to enjoy 2 weeks of alone time here, save the occasional welcome guest, as I have spent my whole life since leaving home living with lots of people; flatmates, partners, landlords, lodgers, my band (yes, even though it wasn't the sixties), squatters, wwoofers and in community. Before I advertise on Gumtree and the flat share websites I am putting this out to the T'ai Chi folks who read this. If you know anyone who is looking for a single or a double room in a Tooting flatshare who doesn't mind recycling, saving their veg peels for compost and who doesn't leave appliances on when they go out, put them in touch with me.

National poetry day

...was today. So here's something from Rumi. From the collection 'Birdsong' trans. Coleman Barks.

People want you to be happy
Don't keep serving them your pain!

If you could untie your wings
and free your soul of jealousy,

You and everyone around you
would fly up like doves.

T'ai Chi Huntly Beginners Class

Throughout the Farmers' Markets and Tattie Holidays, we will continue at the Brander Library from 10.30-12noon every Saturday Morning until 15 December... £6/£4 concession.

Here'a a wonderful descripton of spirit, especially in art. Actor Tilda Swinton is quoted here speaking about the late film maker and artist Derek Jarman in a Guardian article last week.

'What she misses, she has written, is "the whiff of the school play" about his work. "It tickles me still and I miss it terribly. The antidote it offers to the mirror ball of the marketable ... is meat and drink to so many of us looking for that dodgy wig, that moment of awkward zing, that loose corner where we might prise up the carpet and uncover the rich slates of something we might recognise as spirit." '

Article

At T'ai Chi Caledonia the organiser Ronnie Robinson asked me to write a short article as a review of the week. A couple of friends phoned to say they'd seen it. See comments to read it.

The Chronicles of Tao - by Deng Ming-Dao.

I spent last week reading this book which mysteriously appeared at my last house. I wholeheartedly recommend it. It has blow by blow fights in long lost martial styles, a life's quest, Taoist meditation techniques, T'ai Chi, warring Shanghai gangs, mythical wandering hermits as well as twentieth century Chinese history vividly written, extortion, revenge and samadhi. There are also deadly women martial artists, which is always a plus. Spend the darkening evenings reading this great book.