​

I showed him this video from this summer's Working Song ---
as we sing Laurence's song,
   "Busy yourself making beauty,
    busy yourself making love,
    busy yourself making friendship,
    and everything else will work out,"
​--- Mike is heartened. 

​He says, on the ferry, people used to talk to each other, play games, and now everywhere you look people are on their phones. But here we are, building the culture of working together again!
"Keep up the good work!" He says. 

​Seeing these old videos of the Railroad Gandydancers is inspiring, and also humbling. We are doing good work for sure, and we have a ways to go, continuing, as we engage in this work as free people. We can make it the norm for us to work together again, to talk with each other again, to sing with each other again, and with every generation, better than before. With every generation, more just than before. With every generation more beautiful, and more healing. People have always -- long before the railroads, long before slavery -- done this, this work of singing together, of working together, of being together. Sometimes to merely cope with the grief of life and the need to live and work despite the circumstances. Sometimes out of pure joy. Sometimes more seen than others, but it has never died, and it will never die. We can only be carriers, continuing to use these tools we have to create a better world, every day, today, right now. 

We have a long ways to go. Let's keep working.

Here is two more recent videos of some working-and-singing together, as we prepare and install an earthen floor at the Port Townsend Ecovillage. 

​​The opportunity to work on this project came at a turbulent time for me... things were stressful, and I realized I needed a daily practice and could think of only one thing that I really wanted to do every day --- swim in the ocean. Day One of this personal commitment, members of the Ecovillage were also at the beach, at our regular swim spot. They expressed a need for help with their earthen floors. I happened to be out of work for the rest of the month. 

While I was an answer to their immediate prayers, they were an answer to a specific prayer I made back in the spring, for clients who would offer my opportunities within my skillset where we would create something beautiful on their land with people I love. 

The whole project has been full of mutually beneficial expressions. A consistent stream of angels passing through Port Townsend have put their love and song into the mud. Thanks especially to Marlow, Searra, and Liat, helping hands from out of town, Dan for your commitment to helping with what ever is happening, and Gretchen for your neighborly enthusiasm. Thanks also to the crew of a dozen or so friends who helped us harvest clay that had fallen from the high cliffs down onto the beach where we swim (and I'm so grateful we only got a warning and not a ticket for our illicit activities!) Thanks for Terri & Jim for being amazing people, coordinating the whole project and working harder than anyone, and being open to collaboration, and for Bekka entrusting us to work on your room. To everyone who brought and taught and sang songs. It's an honor to work with all of you. This project has had a lot of ups and down and I'm proud of us for persisting and finding solutions through trial-and-error-and-error-and-embracing-the-process-and-error-and-working-and-success. 

The floor is dry and ready for oil this week. 

One more story I'd like to share from this job site. 

Yesterday was a slow day, mostly at spent at home, contemplating, grieving, creek swimming, sun laying. I finally came to work in the late afternoon. I was there about ten minutes, making a whole bunch of noise chopping straw with a weed whacker. At some moment, I looked up and saw a huge heron walking across the lumber pile. Ha! I couldn't contain myself... since the weed whacker was then off, I yelled, "What are you DOING here? You're so beautiful!" It was the closest I've ever been to heron, the pleating dark and white neck feathers, the subtle colours, the graceful movements of its neck. I called Jim out of the house to see, and it didn't pay us much mind as we kept our distance enough.

With my yelling out of the way, I followed silently for some time and my heart felt like it was generating a bubble of happiness the size of the entire neighborhood block. The heron walked the rest of the lumber, back to the foam insulation, across the sand pile (I'm peeking around the big machine of a mortar mixer to see it), around the house, and through the neighbor's garden, finally flying over me toward the swing set... all in hot sunny-September dry-land. How unusual! Earth and its creatures know just the right medicine needed for these kinds of days; awe and a little bit of humour. A heron on a lumber pile. Hearing protection and respirator dangling off my face. Unexpected and odd beauty. Goodness. 

I have been oscillating much recently with the work-track I've gotten myself on or into, somehow, busy with building projects. I often doubt that this - building - is really what I'm "supposed" to be doing. I feel like Jaber Crowe, in the novel by Wendall Berry, who comes upon barbership in his life pretty much by continuous happenstance.

But I think I made peace with doing building projects; there is no need to force another way of being in the world prematurely. This is good, how it is, now. I used to hesitate when I would say, "I'm a builder." Am I? I'm a poet. Am I? I'm an astrologer. Am I? I'm an organizer. Am I? I'm a gardener. Am I? I'm a griever. A healer. Who am I? 

And it's clearer to me now: it is much easier to manifest a feeling than an actual thing, a path, a picture. And the feelings of working with people who value song, ritual, deep connection, grief, patience, healing, love... this is coming to me through the building world - to my surprise? Not really, surprise, but sort of surprise. Definitely humble delight. Now I say, "I'm a builder," and underneath my words, I know what I mean. I mean something literal, and I mean that I doubt myself sometimes and that's okay. I mean I build with and share my life with people who value song, ritual, deep connection, grief, patience, healing, and love. And it's maybe just for now, and it's certainly only one part of me. But it is a reflection of all of me, and all of us, and we're doing it well, as well as we can. 

I am - we all are - souls in a body, growing slowly. We are always in a continuous state of becoming. Becoming ourselves. Coming home to ourselves. We are messy and ungraceful and full of boundless creativity. And we're here to grow. To bump into each other and learn from each other, honor each other, let go of each other, embrace each other, be alone, be together, sing, dance, yell, sit, express, silence.

And we absolutely need each other, to hear each other's stories, to work together to protect our Home. To fight for our Home. To stand up for what we know is right of us, right for Earth, right for water, air, soil, people, creatures of all kinds. We need each other to do this. 

​It all reminds me, magic exists everywhere, every day, every way, with every one.
​Singing thanks.

There is a group of us - travelers, locals, family, friends, lovers of the world - gathered around the dinner table at Fern Hollow. Some of us, including me, are almost 2,000 miles from our home of the northern Cascadian rainforests, taking in the old beauty and birdsong of the Driftless region of the mid-west; never glaciated old forests and fossil creek beds and deeply kind-hearted people, in Decorah, Iowa, in the home of Liz Rog & Daniel Rotto. 

Many times I hugged my fellow companions from Port Townsend and could only say "We're in Liz Rog's kitchen in Decorah, Iowa."

Deanna Pumplin might chuckle, "I know! What are you doing here??"

Wild. Wild means something so different now, not only the exquisite wilderness of the Olympic Mountains, or the changing courses of Canoe Creek, but the taste of a great homemade wine, or the feeling of holding someone you love thousands of miles from where you usually see them. Like geese flying high, like doing something you've never done before, like the wine sliding down the tunnel of our throats, like speaking truth. 

Laurence Cole says, "We're a long way from home, but you people are who I live with." 

I am learning perhaps culture lives inside something much bigger than just a place. Though each place I have been has put itself within me - wood nettles, forest licorice, sugar maples - and other travelers bring things from their places - rhubarb wine, ceremonial cacao, fresh sunflower oil. I think it's impossible to know exactly what we're "supposed" to be "doing" to do "good things" in the world right now. I do not believe there is a way that it should look, like planting trees, or making houses out of mud, painting the street or carving spoons, or singing songs together -- any of these things can be done without opening ones heart to experience what it all means to us. 

What I feel, having been back in Port Townsend for less than 24 hours, having driven alone across the country - there and back - is the necessity of doing only what it is that I Love, and working with those that I Trust. We have the capability to travel across the world, in a way that isn't going to last much longer, and who knows for what purpose or to what detriment. I don't know that we can know. We can opens our heart :: to love, to fear, to anger, to joy, to music, to tears, to Life. And choose to live inside of all of it. To sing inside of all of it. Wildly.

Village Fire is the gathering which inspired this trip across the county. There are so many people to name which made the photo below a possibility, and Liz Rog shared the grand tale of the Sky Lodge's journey on opening night of the gathering. My piece in its way was agreeing to bring the Sky Lodge from the west coast to Iowa. I met the Sky Lodge's maker - Jaybird Cramer - in Bend, Oregon and we left the four tarp pieces and rope with dear friends in Bend. Our friend Nick Wenner picked them up and delivered them to Port Townsend a few days before I would leave in Aimée Ringle's two-door Honda Civic. Set up, a fire in the center and 200 singing people can fit under one of these fantastic outdoor structures, and now Village Fire has one of its own.

It's one of those things - like a set a paints or a musical instrument - that is physical and yet will be the vessel for countless memories, the universe itself expanding all the time. 

The hour of arriving in Decorah, Iowa, two and a half days of driving, a convergence began:

From left to right: Ida Rotto (daughter of Liz, co-organizer of Village Fire), Liz Rog (organizer of Village Fire), and Mila Redwood (organizer of Singing Alive Kauai), Hannah Poirier (organizer of Working Song). Preparing for the gathering was such an honor to do with these wonderful women.

I'm struggling to find words for what I wanted to share here about what I'm bringing back for Working Song Gathering. This trip has been life-changing, some aspect of describing the 'outcomes' is feeling mechanical. The moments of tears and tenderness, and harmony and discourse all folding into something of a generator inside, making new cells in my body's life. And here we go with an outcome: so, Ida brought an organizing structure called "8 Shields" from her school in California. Working Song has started to model our organizing structure on the Singing Alive structure of "ensembles" (using Dynamic Governance). I'm looking forward to figuring out how we can spread out the responsibilities and tasks of the group by what people care about by meshing together the ensembles, the diagram Mia Van Meter & I developed over David Holmgren's Permaculture domains flower, and fit it inside the 8 Shields model so that we can collaborate with Village Fire. 
​
This looks like: ensembles + permaculture = 8 shields for Working Song. 

Why 8 Shields? In short, my love for the people who run Village Fire. It is interesting to me, for our first Working Song in February we didn't use a formal structure, but we had a large group of people who were holding various aspects of the gathering - opening ceremonies, food, venue, song circles, craft teachers - and through many individual meetings the sharing of responsibilities naturally flowed to people's desire to help. With no structure, though, Spring Working Song showed us we need something to hold us together. I find it exciting to use something like 8 Shields so we can use the same language as another organizing group to collaborate on organizational structures and growth of an organization. It is also true that I like the 8 Shields model, but every organizational structure I've been inside of deviates from what is intended. There's what is "ideal" and then there's who is there to do it. What I see helps groups the most is not having the most perfect structure, but the people within having Love for each other, and the structure allowing for people to connect in a genuine way.

​We sing. We sing all the time, for joy and gratitude, grief and sorrow and silliness. For revolutions, for peace. Music unites us.

When we left Village Fire, the first text message I received was from my birth-father, who told me about the shooting at Pulse in Orlando, Florida, where he and his wife had their first date. 49 people killed. All the more, facts on climate change, war, social justice, key species die offs becomes more quantified, qualified, measured by sciences. On my drive across the country, I passed dozens of fracking facilities. And what will change us? 

Some of my favourite words on the topic are by Gus Speth: "I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that 30 years of good science we could address those problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy... and to deal with those we need a spiritual and cultural transformation, and we scientists don't know how to do that." 

No single group of people will "know" in a concrete way how to "do that". How to radiate - like an enormous, massive, gravitational sun from the center of your chest and through your whole being - a great Love, how to tend to broken and fearful hearts, how to heal a wounded culture. But when we sing, all differences melt away.

​Another attendee of Village Fire wrote an article in the Iowa City Press-Citizen about such: here.
​

Last night, when I arrived home, I biked to the ocean and ate my dinner there, taking with a friend on the phone for building plans to come this month. Mt. Baker was snowy and pink with sunset and the water was calm. The longest day of the year. Like writing the words "Village Fire" on the calendar, I could never know what the experiences inside this coming project will be. There's the words, and then there is what happens Inside. Sea water washes over my feet, and the water touching me touches all the ocean. So too our hearts touch each other. So too the songs carry our lives.


Only in silence, the word. 
Only in dark, the light.
Only in dying, life.
Bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky.
~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Last night, we sang in the army bunkers, a favourite spot for sound in Port Townsend. The echo of old cement walls, hallways, and passages are gloriously resonant, and at first we are two, then three, and four, sharing harmony and healing words. 

A few songs in, we are joined by a 15 year old fellow, a self proclaimed fan of 'rhythm and blues and muscle cars', who originally stopped us asking if we'd seen a few 'punk ass kids' around he'd been looking for with a heavy duty flashlight. He and his old derby hat sang right with us and couldn't resist after every song expressing how calming and beautiful it was. 

Then, as people walked by wondering what the singing was about, we'd wave and welcome them in. We were joined by two more young guys, then three more young guys, a group of three young girls, and soon we were a group in total of about twenty, singing simple songs together in the army bunkers. 

They were all middle-and-high-schoolers and -- though some of them sometimes would look sideways at each other, wondering if what they were all doing was socially acceptable, or kept themselves composed in a way that said "this is a little crazy" -- everyone sang, and smiled. And we sang! Soulfully, song after song, getting into more complicated rounds, four part harmonies.  The very words we sang, "If you can walk, you can dance. If you can talk, you can sing," an affirmation to the magic of our insta-choir. 

Gretchen Sleicher turns to me as everyone is leaving and says, "You know what that says to me? EVERYONE can sing and wants to sing." We've seen the number of intentional singing programs in and out of schools increases as public funding for the arts decreases. Somehow, in the collapse of everything, resurgence is happening consciously, and perhaps everything -- from art programs to villages -- needed to die in order to bring our deepest needs for things that are simple and important to existence now with intention. 

The musical vibration of song is a deeply primal Placemaking tool. At once, we are in a cement room surrounded by gun batteries, and at once when we are leaving one young man says, "Now these will never be scary." Our voices bring a change to the space that is in one state, and then is transformed. I have felt in every place where I have sang, some indescribable energetic shift in the universe that began in resonance from a musical tone. Laurence Cole often says, "Human Being are Singing Things," and it is well believed we have been singing long before there was language. I feel this remembered by the Earth, and Everything listens deeper to each other with the singing of Human Beings, just as the quiver of aspen leaves and the trickle of a creek.

Some Buddhist monks undergo an initiation of seven years of isolation in a cave, removed from society and much of the natural world, so that when they emerge they are so touched by the beauty of the physical world that they remain in a state of bliss for the rest of their life. After building at Laurence & Deanna's house last week, we went to the beach for sunset and as we remembered this, we thought with so many millions of people confined to office cubicles and factory sweat shops, we've got an entire culture of enlightened bliss right on the edge! The initiation of 'the information age' will free itself into grief, and creativity, and Love deeper than we have possibly known as a species. We saw a glimpse of this with the teenagers who joined us, many of whom expressed they've never done anything like that before, and who sang proudly together.

I climb to the top of the bunkers to watch the sunset. I'm singing with just myself, still processing the magic that has just occurred with the teenagers and us below. An enormous cannon used to shoot from below where I stand, out into the ocean where I see the golden-rose light outlining the San Juan islands, Victoria, BC, turning the sea into liquid Love. Last night, a friend and I ate dinner at sunset on the other side of the water, Port Townsend looking like a speck of civilization, sailboat harbors, gushing smoke from the paper mill... a tiny cluster of activity only a thumbprint on the base Olympic Mountains, blue and snowy, behind their proud evergreen foothills. What once was war, is now watched over in relative peace, and I feel this as a prayer for peace everywhere. I stand on the place we looked out to yesterday, the cascade mountains are strong at my back and blushing pink and I can't help but know I live in one of the the most beautiful place on Earth in this moment. 

Sunlight streams through a fine filter of beauty, through tall grasses, butterfly wings, blooming wildflowers, and fantastic cloud forms, then touching the ground. This Place is changed this with our presence and our song. I feel the words of Alexa Sunshine Rose deep in every molecule of my body:

We are created by sound, we are created by the song of the universe.