Tour Tales

The past couple of weeks have felt like a whirlwind; in the best way. I found myself complaining to the best human this morning that I felt too slow today, that I wasn’t moving fast enough with the day and with the list – there’s always a list. As an habituated workaholic I know I’m the one with the problem regarding the need for speed. I’ve had write a blog on the list for a week now and so finally, I’m giving it the space, having composted a whole load of things I want to say in the brain bin.

Touring  Fish Tales is an incomparable experience for me. Yes, I’ve toured before and done more gigs than I can count. I’ve had great fun doing gigs and real moments of total immersion in the experience. Music and performance are super powerful human expressions and not to be dismissed. So what makes Fish Tales so special, so stand-out different?  I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I have theories but no definitive answers.

One theory is that the nature of jazz makes this a special experience. The musicians are all stunning artists in their own individual right. Each one a gifted player with extraordinary musicality. They come together and form a marvellous octet under Alan Barnes’ leadership and create a magical space for a couple of hours in which their music and my words commingle to make something special happen. And then we all go away. Everyone works with lots of other people. The octet is an association, a free and open musical relationship that is not limited or constrained. I’ve marvelled at how this happens in the jazz world, at how jazz musicians practise this free association, moving in and out of ensembles, fluid not fixed. It’s rather beautiful and magical. Sure, musicians gravitate towards those with whom they’ve developed a groove or a particular relationship. Of course bands form but there seems to be an openness of spirit and willingness to move freely and easily as the creative process opens up.  This freedom appeals to my nature and my instinct as an artist.

Another theory, one that is based on my experience of talking to audiences and fellow musicians is that the work itself speaks loudly and is important; perhaps more important than I realised when this project began.  Fish Tales is about something lost. It’s about a lost industry and a lost time. When I was writing I did not want the piece to be nostalgic or romantic. There is too much romanticising of fishing and not enough discussion of how deadly it was. However, when Grimsby, and other communities lost their fishing, nothing replaced it. This is a story that is replicated across the UK in terms of the loss of manufacturing and production that began in the 80’s and which is still continuing as the final pieces are dismantled, sold off or left to fall into obsolescence.  What is left behind is poverty, worklessness  and lack of hope and aspiration. I see it here in my town, writ large. There is not enough meaningful work, communities are divided and often impoverished and without massive investment it is hard to see how current trends can be reversed.

Fish Tales then is a story of what once was, what is lost forever and now commemorated in verse and music. It is a monument and an honouring of the industrial past, a recognition of what was done by the fishing community and what it meant.

At a more simple level, I just love being on stage with such an incredible calibre of musicians and part of a suite of new work which is complex, challenging, exciting and beautiful. Fish Tales is full of riches. The interplay between musicians, the dialogue between my words and the musical themes and motifs make it exciting to perform each and every time. I remember the visceral thrill when I heard it the first time, last year, the lump that came to my throat when the music swelled like the tide. I have simply never felt as fully immersed in a piece of work as I feel in this. It has set the bar and when the time comes to write something new then this is the level at which I want to work.

 

A Fish Tale- For Juniors

This week sees the official release of A Fish Tale – A Story and Song for Children.  This is the little sister project to the major A Fish Tale  Jazz and Poetry tour.  This work has been undertaken in partnership with Gill Wilde at Grimsby Jazz and Sue Baker at the NEL Music Hub.  This Spring the creative team has delivered sixteen workshops for primary school children in NE Lincs.

Today we came together with 700 children, a fabulous band and conductor and performed the story and music live to an audience of rapt parents, grandparents and guests. What a joy.  All of this work was made possible thanks to an Arts Council grant and has been money well spent on a worthwhile and hugely enjoyable piece of work.

We now have a wonderful book for sale; a photocopiable resource including the whole story, the songs, lyrics and music and a CD to accompany.  This is available to order directly from me by emailing msjosiemoon@gmail.com  

Josie and book

The book is £20 plus £1.50 p&p.  This is a resource that can be used by children’s groups, schools, community groups, libraries and choirs and incorporates local history and myth as well as having fantastically singable songs.

I have to say a big thank you to my partner and co-writer in this project, Pat McCarthy who is a consummate composer and sympathetic arranger for voices. You can catch us out on tour with Alan Barnes and the orchestra across the country and also look out for McCarthy  and Moon gigs coming very soon.

First Night @ Kardomah94

I always get gig nerves and I’m always glad I do. They have a focusing effect and take me right to the heart of the moment, to the meaning of the performance. It never matters how big or small the audience is, gig nerves are always welcome as a physical sign that I’m engaging with what’s about to happen.

The process goes in stages for me. In the afternoon before a gig I become introverted, lost in the anticipation of what’s ahead. I withdraw, go into that space inside that’s exclusively mine. It’s a private room in Moon Towers to which no one but me has access. Only recently have I recognized this withdrawal as a positive thing. I used to worry that it was my body telling me I didn’t really want to perform but now I see it’s my body’s way of making sure I’m ready.

As I physically get ready for the performance – hair,make-up, dressing – I come out of that withdrawal and into the anticipatory stage. Giddiness follows and then readiness.

Taking to the stage last night with the most incredible band, the Alan Barnes Octet, I felt that I had rarely been more ready or more up for a gig. This tour, this music, this poetry, this performance period feels like a whole new level of experience, a different world.  It’s not just the fact that every member of the band is a stellar musician in his own right or that together their alchemy is beyond the reach of words. It’s also the marriage of words and music, of Ariadne’s silver thread leading the way through a labyrinth of rhythms and sounds and vibrations that create a whole shimmering completeness.  It’s an ecstatic experience to be in and of that process.

Kardomah94 is an exceptional place. It’s an arts space with an ethos of ‘can do, will do, and they do. It is a venue that serves artists and audiences equally well and it truly was a pleasure to be there.

As with the very best gigs, I don’t remember very much about last night. But I do remember the conversations afterwards, the people we touched, the rapture in the room at moments.

Pauline, a member of the audience gave me two drawings as a gift. A witch in an eggshell and me as a mermaid. How beautiful that she saw me as a mermaid. Thank you Pauline. And thank you to everyone who came last night. It was truly something.

witch pic jpeg

La Luna Launches Young Voices Project

Yesterday saw the launch of the La Luna Young Voices poetry project at Franklin College. This project provides an exciting opportunity for young writers to develop their writing craft both for performance and for publication. Later this year La Luna will be publishing an anthology of writing from the young people involved in this project. Students at workhop 1

Special guest poet Antony Dunn came to Franklin College to deliver a workshop for the young people. Antony is a gifted and inspiring teacher and it was such a pleasure to see the students engage in some challenging exercises, and to hear the work they produced which was full of wit and inventiveness. Antony encouraged the students to work to develop their thinking and to run with their thoughts to see how far they could take them.  This led to them being able to fully realise their ideas on the page. Antony Dunn 1

Following the workshop we adjourned to the Franklin garden for tea and poetry with an appreciative audience. Antony is a seasoned reader and is compelling to hear. He introduces poems without paraphrasing them and gives profound insight into the poetic imagination that is the heart of his work. Poetry Tea 1

Alongside Antony, the young people read their work, several of them for the first time. In fact for one student it was the first time she had allowed anyone to see her work. Her courage astonished and moved me.

Every one of those young people who read in the garden yesterday gave voice to something unique and beautiful about themselves. The honesty, openness and authenticity of their work was powerful. It felt like a great honour to be there, hearing their words and knowing that La Luna has the time, the money and the expertise to help these young writers to grow over the course of this project.

The project continues later this week when Nick Triplow and I will be getting down to the business of submissions, editing and handing work over for that all important critical feedback. I am looking forward to seeing the work on the page and to working with Nick, the students and their wonderful teacher Carolyn Doyley over the next few weeks. I think the outcome will be a truly magical book.

Thanks and credit must also be given to Brooke Downing, photography student at Franklin whose photographs not only capture the participants but also the spirit of the day. Antony Dunn reading 3

Working Weeks

It’s a big week at Moon Towers, the imaginary house inside my head where I spend a lot more time writing and a lot less time ‘doing’ in the world. Moon Towers is an enormous, rambling old place with an orchard and a rose garden in what was once a ballroom. There’s a pile of old dogs sleeping on couches in a conservatory that is west facing so as to welcome the sunset each day. There is always a sandwich, always a coffee and never any laundry or washing up to do.

And we’re back in the real world for a moment.  The real world this week actually is a manifestation of the fruit of the time spent in Moon Towers.  This week sees the beginning of the tour with Alan Barnes, Pat McCarthy and the fabulous Fish Tales orchestra. We begin on Thursday 6th July at Kardomah 94 in Hull. I’ve been rehearsing and buying frocks.

Also this week I launch the first part of my ACE funded poetry project and am thrilled to be working with Antony Dunn, Nick Triplow and the young writers at Franklin College. This part of the project will culminate in a La Luna anthology of new writing from the young people later this year.

As if that wasn’t enough, A Fish Tale for Juniors goes to print tomorrow, just in time for the children’s singing festival next week. I get to dress up as Saga, the Norse Goddess associated with poetry and history for the festival. Appropriate for a storyteller I think.

Last but not least, Pat McCarthy and I will be getting our heads together and launching a new and exciting mini project featuring jazz and poetry.

Sometimes I think I don’t do enough, that I’m not busy or productive enough. I fall prey to feeling guilty about the time I spend on the roof at Moon Towers, counting stars and dreams and singing to the old dogs downstairs.

But it’s all worthwhile and beyond exciting when a week like this rolls in; when your doves come home from the mysterious places they’ve been in flight and settle in their cote under a twilight blue sky with the scent of old roses drifting in on the breeze.

 

 

Praise for A Fish Tale

Thanks To Claire Meadows for this review of A Fish Tale

A collection that is startlingly contemporary, yet resonant with the voices of the past. Josie Moon’s command of language is the anchor….free of cliche, coaxing the stories behind each verse into the light of day. Her touch is deft, without being overly slick, mournful, but with a vestige of hope for the future. Being of Hull as I am, Arctic stories are no stranger. I closed my eyes, imbibing each story and feeling the sea salt bubble up in my blood. Moon’s words worked their magic…bringing to mind the tales of my trawler-ship captain great-uncle Dick..tales filtered down through years….now lost to time. I’m able to imagine..maybe more vividly than most..the world of the Three-Day Millionaires. Uncle Dick and Aunt Gwen in the 60s and 70s, dashing down to London with their own personal driver, making the most of his shore time, before heading back into a world that was dangerous as it was compelling. Josie Moon should feel very proud of this collection.

Claire Meadows is Editor in Chief, After Nyne Magazine and  author of To The Lions. www.afternynemagazine.com 

Free Association

The anarchist movement presents some challenging theories regarding the structure and organisation of society. Not surprisingly perhaps, most of these are not in evidence in mainstream public or private life because of the human tendency to conform to pre-existing structures and models and familiar paradigms of social and governmental practice. Most commonly considered in political terms, free association is also personal and is increasingly a governing principle of my personal philosophy.

The idea of free association has been revelatory in terms of embracing the principle that one is wholly free to associate with whoever one likes and for that association to have no constraints on it. The nature of being is that we change and grow and being locked into relationships when they cease to be meaningful is a corrosive experience that inhibits growth for both parties. The biggest learning of this past year has been to recognise and be honest about when it is time to leave.

In practice, free association is difficult. Human beings form attachments and these can quickly become possessive and all encompassing. It is easy to be overwhelmed by these kinds of relationships and to feel disproportionately beholden to people or groups out of a sense of loyalty. Obligation that stunts growth is unhealthy and when any situation becomes a burden then it is time to go.

Free association enables us to bring out the best in ourselves and others for whatever time it is appropriate for the particular relationship to exist. It is a philosophy that recognizes the essential nature of individuals as beings in their own right. It empowers each individual to take responsibility for the path they are walking without the need to impose on others. It allows being to move and flow when it needs to and imposes no constraints.

Free association is at the heart of my sense of self. I own no one and no one owns me. I have no desire to own anyone and reject anyone who would impose their being on me. I delight in others and their achievements. I love working with people but respect their right to work with others and to do as they wish. This feels like a ridiculously simple and infallible way to live.

The Handmaid’s Tale, Critical Debate and Adaptation

Literary adaptation is a problematic art form and is very much a hot topic at present with the runaway success of Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (THT). Taut, politically astute and imbued with dread the adaptation does not adhere strictly to the text and yet is paradoxically faithful to it in terms of capturing the nuances of Atwood’s cautionary tale.  

The adaptation has come at an apt moment and eerily reflects critical examples of state violence and oppression that are current. FGM, radical evangelicalism, homophobia and attacks on women’s reproductive rights are starkly presented and have their seeds in the novel. Atwood famously used precedent for everything she presented in the novel from the role of the handmaids to the salvagings. Since the publication of the novel in the 1980’s, Atwood’s novel has come to reflect the reality of many women’s lives rather than become an anachronism of a time now past. In this way it shares similarity with Orwell’s 1984 that has never also never dated or lost its impact. 

I was curious to observe and participate in discussion forums about The Handmaid’s Tale and have spent a week or so making occasional comments and reading posts. I have now withdrawn from that.  In part, life is just too short but also I found the level of some – not all – comment facile. I appreciate and support the right for everyone to take part in debates and to express opinions and clearly the adaptation has ignited a great deal of passionate conversation. However, when a particular thread was asking  ‘are you team Nick or team Luke’ I felt deeply uncomfortable.   THT is a serious novel. It is not chick lit. It is not romantic.

Luke was Offred’s husband in pre-Gilead. In the novel his fate is unclear. In the adaptation he escapes to Canada. In either scenario he is lost to Offred.  In the novel and the adaptation Offred mourns him. Nick, the driver in the Commander’s household is first used as a tool by Serena Joy to get Offred pregnant. Her body is for his use as a means of reproduction.  

In the novel Nick is ambiguous in terms of his position in Gilead. In the adaptation he is an Eye, a member of the horrific secret police. As he and Offred embark on a sexual relationship, in the novel he says ‘no romance’ and he is right. There is no romance. Like for Winston and Julia in 1984 sexual love endangers both of their lives. However, for Offred her status makes the danger worse for her. In the language of Gilead, women are whores, temptresses and responsible for the provocation of lust. The inequality in Nick and Offred’s relationship is a stark emblematic reminder of the abjection of the handmaids and the powerlessness of women. It is not something to be celebrated however much comfort it appears to give to Offred. Remember it is she, not Nick who is taken by the secret police at the end of the novel. We assume she survives at least long enough to record her story and we know Gilead falls but that does not mitigate against the horror of her life or the certainty of the violence used against her. So, ‘team Nick,’ no thank you.  

In truth, I have a problem with team anything. Superficially it’s fine to nail your colours to a mast and come out in support of a position. As evidenced by the recent UK General Election it is sometimes very important to sign up to a movement, to get behind someone and work collectively to make a difference.  However,  to do it uncritically is to put oneself under the thrall of the ‘they’ and to abdicate personal responsibility for thinking about issues that are complex and nuanced.  

In my professional life I have seen the ‘team’ principle in action and it is a business practice linked to corporate values. With the increasingly managerialist and bureaucratic culture pervading professional and public life the notion of ‘team’ is sinister. To me it’s about subsuming individual identity within the value system of a corporation or organisation. To use the language of Star Trek, I have no desire to be assimilated.

Once one accepts the subsuming of self and adherence to the values of the ‘team’ one accepts authority. The problem with authority is it leads to authoritarianism and authoritarianism is on the continuum towards totalitarianism. This is the trajectory of THT. Corporate America with its neoliberal values, tolerance of extreme right wing Christian fundamentalism and obsession with women’s bodies and reproduction gives way to Gilead. Gilead is one possible end point of a political system that was in train in the 1980’s in America and which is still in motion now. Hence the timely arrival of Hulu’s adaptation. The cast are quoted as saying their work is activism. This is why the level of debate around it is important. 

As I have said, everyone is free (ironically given the context) to express their view and engage in whatever level of debate they so desire. I want to explore this ‘team man’ idea a little deeper. Slash fiction, fan fiction and ‘shipping’ – appropriating a relationship to characters in fiction that does not exist – is a pop cultural phenomenon that started with Star Trek fans imagining a homoerotic relationship between Kirk and Spock. It’s fun and light and can be hugely creative. However, shipping also gave the world 50 Shades of Grey.  Born out of the horribly misogynistic Twilight saga, 50 Shades presents a deeply dysfunctional and abusive relationship as a romantic BDSM fantasy. The internalised misogyny in that novel is breathtaking. It was a runaway success on the back of an anti-feminist backlash. Twilight struck me – and many others -as a neo-Con, illiberal riposte to Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Buffy was a series that placed feminist values at the heart of its story arc and which dealt with rape and violence seriously. It was deeply depressing to see the ascension of Twilight sweeping away the empowerment that Buffy had brought to the small screen and to see the young women I was teaching at the time wearing ‘Team Edward’ t-shirts.

Post Buffy, post Twilight the zeitgeist has lost its appetite for the supernatural and has turned to dystopian literature. Art always reflects life and in a world where there is perpetual threat from terrorism and from government it is unsurprising that THT is so powerful. There are women in the United States dressing as handmaids to make political protests, drawing attention to the violence against women’s’ bodies being committed by legislative practices. Anti-abortion laws, the religious right, the retrograde and downright dangerous Trump administration are clear and present dangers. In the UK, a filthy and discredited government is so desperate to cling to the dying embers of its power it is brokering a deal with a political party, the DUP,  that does not believe dinosaurs existed, upholds legislation that makes abortion an imprisonable offence and actively promotes homophobia. Dark times.

Offred in THT is not only a singularly oppressed woman imprisoned in a state that sentences her to constant rape and reduces her personhood to the viability of her ovaries, she is a symbol, an icon even, of oppressed women everywhere. The handmaid is the ultimate objectified woman, invisible and irrelevant except for her reproductive capacity. The brutality that is used to enforce that subjection is unflinching. The adaptation goes further than the novel. Following the episode in which Emily/Ofglen underwent a forced cliterodectomy as punishment for her sexual relationship with a woman, I could not sleep as I was so horrified. The world over, there are preachers speaking in favour of FGM as a way of controlling women’s sexuality and it is still accepted ‘cultural’ practice in too many places. There is a war being waged against women all of the time and there are those who will persist in their endeavours to roll back hard won rights and freedoms. THT is part of the fight, a cultural phenomenon that makes a challenge to power and spotlights the grotesque inequalities that women still face and which are a stark reminder that without vigilance and rigorous debate and readiness to fight,  rights and freedoms that do exist are not a given.

 

 

Photograph copyright @ McLelland and Stewart

 

 

The Nature of Birthdays

I have just had what is often referred to as a ‘significant birthday.’  It was my 50th birthday and it did feel significant but not because of the fact of the number 50. The number 1 is in fact the reason for its significance. This was my first birthday as Josie Moon and that is what feels important about this mark in time.

I chose to change my name last year – along with a great many other things. My full adopted name is Josie-Anne Elizabeth Crescent-Moon, Josie Moon for ease. I chose to rename myself as part of the process of reclaiming myself. I had an identity and way of being that no longer fit the person I was gradually becoming.  I wanted an identity that reflected the changes I was making to myself and my life. The change was not a slight to anyone or a rejection of any other person. It was an embracing of self.

When we are born we are thrown into the world and a context we cannot comprehend. Our existence and identity is entirely dependent on others and we grow and develop as part of a family, a society with a set of rules and practices that we have not chosen for ourselves. We do our best to live within our context and our given identity.

But contexts change. Experience shapes and influences us and we change as a result. Last year as I looked ahead to turning 50, to the inevitable changes that middle life brings I knew I needed a name to take me forward, a name of my own choosing.

I’d already been writing as Josie-Anne for a while and Elizabeth was my given middle name and I like very much. It was the surname that was the most radical choice.

Every month the crescent moon appears in the sky, sharp, new and clear. For me that moon is a symbol of renewal, of possibility and of mutability. All of nature is influenced by the moon and its relationship to the tides, to the cycle of a month, to the very cycle of life itself. The moon reminds us that change is constant and inevitable.

I also love Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, a novel that is now more starkly relevant than ever. At the end Professor Maryann Crescent Moon chairs a conference on Gilead studies. Women are once again powerful, the keepers and guardians of other women’s stories, academics and thinkers and holding names relevant to the earth and nature. Although the Historical Notes section is a shock after the journey with Offred through the novel, and can arguably be read as flippant, it serves as a reminder of mutability. Nothing is constant, including fascist, totalitarian states. All will fall. There is always the possibility of change and renewal. There is always the possibility of a Professor Crescent Moon to curate the past but live in the present and look responsibly to the future.

So I became Crescent-Moon.  With this name and identity I curate the past including the person, in fact people I used to be. I honour the past and value it for all it taught me and for all its connections, relationships, triumphs and disasters.   But I live in the present and I look responsibly towards the future aware of my mutability and all the possibility symbolised in the monthly, hopeful crescent moon cutting the sky, sharp but rounded.

With this more fully realised sense of self I celebrated my first and my 50th birthday on June 3rd. On a quiet beach in a quiet place, dawn broke and I listened to the birds singing, to the breakers on the shore, to my heart beating and I knew myself very well.