Hails fair listeners <3 Happy Gregorian New Year!
I've decided to spend this year telling my story. I hope to share some of the things I've learned during my life, through all the joys and pains of my healing quest in the sacred musical woodlands.
I hope to offer insight to the purpose and origin of my work, as well as a space to connect on a personal note ;)
Compassion and Faery blessings,
~ <3 Trolli <3 ~
”Deep within the forest. Deep, within the forest. There I wait for you. There, I wait for you. For you, my love.” -Robbie Basho
When I was a teenager, I possessed a major lack of social skills, had very few friends, and the only semblance of popularity I ever gained was through being heavily involved in the school's (fortunately rather excellent) choir program. Obviously I was never invited to any parties involving alcohol, sex or other drugs. I barely had any awareness that such things were even happening, because I didn't consume the popular media of the time and place.
Despite being decently good at sports and participating in some other extracurricular activities, I still lacked any ability to socialize with the other kids involved. Making eye contact, speaking up, using the colloquial lingo, and having any awareness of my own body language were quite the opposite of strong suits for me. The ability to hold a conversation in a normal or comfortable way was essentially nonexistent.
Though such communication blockages were in many ways painful and stifling, I now understand this inability to socialize in the normative environment of my upbringing to have been a major blessing for my life and growth as a human being and as an artist.
Solitude did suit me well enough... I had my musical practice; the piano, singing, composition. I had the internet; endless music to discover, philosophers and comedians to listen to, video games to play, fantasy stories to wonder with.
Perhaps most importantly... I had the forest.
The forest had me. In the town I lived in at the time, there were a significant amount of parks and forests. Most of my teenage years, the house my family lived in was just a few blocks away from what would become known to me as The Fifteen Deer Wood.
For several years, I would walk to this Wood every few days, wintertime included. I would roam the thin, dirt paths, the winding, clear creeks, and the leaf burnished hill crests. I would explore off the paths, and sit among the deciduous groves. Surrounding the Wood were only houses and neighborhoods, so the birds' songs and the creek's gentle murmur were allowed their proper space.
An unmarked, leaf shrouded path lay at the edge of the city park, smiling in silence and reserve, with its leaves' golden glow in the sun; with its grass' muddy lilt in the rain; with its branches wordless whisper in the wind. Brushing past the foliage curtain, the root laden path led soon to the creek's edge, and followed that blessed stream on the north side for a goodly bit.
At the moment the path first wound off away from the water, there lay a rare grove of pines. I would often stop here and sit among them, and gaze up their fuzzy trunks. I would often read fantasy books to the swishing of their fine evergreen needles, and the trickling of the creek beside. This grove was a chest of gold in the sunlight, and an ancient temple in the moon's glow. However, where I met unveiled the spirit of the grove was in the cloudy, moonless darkness of mid-night.
I had been off deep in the Wood all evening and early nighttime, and was returning home, step by careful step. I rounded a thickly shadowed bend, and knew then I was at the pine grove near to the forest's edge. The silence was profound. The stillness was the center of my heart and mind, and the center of the circle of conifers; sages robed in nothingness and green-black. The flowing creek's gentle burble warped from sound, and joined the silence as wooden notes of invisible light. Through this moment she sang to me.
~
Thank you Goddess! A few years later, I gave the world my most earnest translation of her wisdom.
Track: Silent River
Album: Place of the Forgotten
Artist: Silent Temple
I did not know it at the time, but part of what was being given by those woods was my ability and space to utilize separateness from my peers and community to find the ancient and authentic version of my self. Certainly not all the aspects of accepting a sort of “outsider” social status were healthy or helpful, but I had a very long journey ahead to find and become what I was truly looking for ~
...which I'll tell you another tale about here next week! Until then I offer you a doorway to a library of finely crafted Organic Faery Music ~
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