wyld_dandelyon: (Guitar Angel)
Yesterday left me sad, having missed the aurora (again) and thinking on a kerfluffle in the local filk community (at least, I hope it will prove to be merely a brief fuss), and issues in a different musical group (I got to listen to an elderly man tell me that he knows what racism is because he uses Hitler's definition (!) and people don't get to change meanings of words (!) and I lost my temper with him, not that he cared.) My music communities are my social lifeline, so these things are very troubling to me. I headed to bed only to have sleep escape me for hours, despite pointing my brain elsewhere by doing duolinguo and reading frivolous fiction and petting a purring cat.

After dawn, I almost gave up and went outside to work in the garden, except it was cold out there, and I was already feeling cold. Finally I fell asleep. Happily, in my dreams, I was at a Worldcon with many friendly filkers around me, with lots of singing and friendly interactions. I particularly remember singing with someone with a very lovely deep voice. I woke feeling healed and hopeful. I hope that dream is a good omen for things going forward. (And many thanks to the filkers who came to my dream Worldcon, and sang and chatted and were good company.)

I got some of the plants I bought on Saturday in the ground, but not all of them. Waking after 3 pm leaves a very limited amount of outdoor time after doing things like getting dressed and eating breakfast, especially with clouds blowing in and rain arriving before sunset. But I now have cucumber plants in the garden! I'm still hoping the stores get Cherokee Purple tomatoes in, but I have some other tomato varieties out there, and some squash too. A few Ausilio peppers. And pea seedlings, finally. Soon I'll have to plant beans too, but they are truly a warm weather plant; no point in planting them until it's warm enough for them to germinate instead of rotting in the ground.

We are also moving some of the now-abundant wood violets that have moved inward from the borders of the garden from where they would be crowding the vegetables to other places in the yard, to make other border areas look nice and maybe to encourage the grass to stay out of where we're planting flowers and/or vegetables. It makes me smile to see all the little purple flowers! Of course, they only bloom in spring, but right now there's a lot of them, even more than dandelions.

And I got to chat with my daughter for Mother's Day (twice even, because she was hanging out at my sister's house and the first call got interrupted by dinner). She's doing well, and is past the probation period of her new job and is taking a training that she's excited about now that the new job will pay for it. So, all in all, a better day than yesterday.
wyld_dandelyon: (Guitar Angel)
I feel like it's taking way too long to get things up there, but there's two songs now and more coming. I'd hoped for two this month, to improve on what I managed last month, but am super-tired after going to OVFF. At least now that it's cold outside, recording conditions should be better, as there will be less city-noise. (It seems that motorcycles and other noisy vehicles are less popular when it's cold. Go figure.)

Anyway, these two tracks are a couple of my favorite FAWM experiments.

So, if you want to check out my first offerings, I can be found here: https://wylddandelyon.bandcamp.com/

You can also sign up to be notified whenever I post something new there, if you like. https://wylddandelyon.bandcamp.com/follow_me

I might (maybe) manage to get another one up later today (after sleeping); I want to, but this long covid tiredness is unpredictable and is also so very frustrating!

Bandcamp Friday, when Bandcamp waives its own fees and sends more money to the artist, is today. (Any fees from your source of payment and from paypal are still in efect.) So if you do want to buy music, today is a great day to do it.
wyld_dandelyon: (Default)
This post-covid crap is horrible. I'm behind on everything possible.

On Saturday, I (very slowly) got the tomato plants we bought Friday into the ground while listening to the Festival of the Living Rooms concerts; My Angel got the squash and hostas planted. (I had daydreams of getting some more showy shade plants to put under the mulberry tree, but My Angel likes hostas, and they were on sale and placed easy-to-find at the store. I then very slowly got the gardening tools and stool inside, and planned to plant cucumber (seeds, sadly the store had no plants) on Sunday. The weather laughed at me and provided chilly rain all day.

Today (Monday), I had a late breakfast, did the Cologard thing (which left me exhausted--again, this is a dreadful virus. I'm not even testing positive any more! I so very much did not need this!) Anyway, the cat wanted me to lay down and pet her. I did, and fell asleep for more than three hours. It was too dark for planting cucumbers by then. Hopefully tomorrow.

There's lots of roses out there, but I have not got out to properly photograph them, much less do pruning and weeding.

I did manage to do a little singing during the Festival, though. Friday, singing was really hard. I just didn't have enough breath. I had some focus, though, and did some painting. On Saturday and Sunday singing was better, but I didn't have much focus for it. People said I sounded good, though! In between songs, I mindlessly deleted old political and sales e-mails that were too boring to bother with before. There's still way too many of them, but I zapped thousands.

It was very pleasant listening to so many friends singing to me, sitting in my living room and doing almost nothing. But in a better world, it could have been very pleasant singing lots of songs and getting something else done in between turns. Very pleasant indeed!

I never did get back out to take more pictures of the wonderful-smelling roses, but I got this shot of one of the first ones last week. I'll try for more tomorrow, if I'm feelig up to it.


A lovely pink rose between two buds; one of the first in my garden this year.
wyld_dandelyon: (Default)
So, I did taxes last week which left me feeling very drained. A lot of that was the number of 1099s I just didn't have. Most of these are from inherited stuff that was from the breakup of Ma Bell, and they aren't large enough to make a real difference to my budget, but not putting those numbers into the tax forms would cause problems. I ended up spending time searching likely and unlikely places for more mail, and didn't find anything. Then I had to spend time going online or via telephone to get the numbers I needed for the forms. And hitting that button is always anxiety-inducing, because what if I missed something--and with half or more of the ones I expected were in the stack of mail that I'd carefully sequestered with the tax records, there was more anxixety than usual attached to that.

It is also worrysome because we've been getting a lot of mail that was addressed to this neighbor or that, so I'm wondering who got my mail. Ugh.

Then I moved to looking at the song swap songs, paying the end-of-month bills, and practicing music. Instead of just practicing, I started doing some lyric rewriting and rearranging of a couple of songs. I spent several days taking naps, which is unusual; not sure if that was related to getting over the dumb infection I was on antibiotics for or just getting to bed late or something else. But at least the infection symptoms didn't come back as the antibiotic left my system and I could sing without throat pain again, so I could sing and do that work on the songs.

So yesterday (Saturday) I got up, loaded instruments into the car, and headed to Ravenslake Studios. We did some talking and I did some music, including experimenting with different guitars on a couple of the songs, and got some good work. It ended with some frustration, when the 12-string broke a string, but we were just about out of time anyway. But we got some good work done, and then did some social music and went out for food, so it was a very good day. And then I drove to my sisters house to hang out for a bit, and she put a dumb movie on the TV, and she told me about the kitten she didn't adopt, and the different one my daughter did adopt while I was doing music stuff, and that was good too.

Until all the music stuff stopped being my sole focus and I remembered that Sunday was a writer's group day, and I hadn't read the submission I was to critique, and hadn't made a dish to share either. So I drove back to Milwaukee (from Chicago) and read the submission, asked My Angel to cut up and boil potatoes, and fell in bed. Then I got up too early (or at least it felt like that), chopped some onion and celery, boiled some eggs, and turned it all into potato salad. While I was working on that, my daughter texted pictures of her new kitten and we ended up chatting on the phone (communicating with my mouth is so much better when I need my fingers to make food). Writer's group went well too, and I managed to offer a few comments that made Writer's eyes gleam and her fingers tap. That's always a good feeling.

Then home to take care of at least a few chores, and I'm tired way too early. Or still. Or something like that. And my brain keeps on switching which of my songs is playing in the background, so there shall be more music happening soon. Just probably not tonight.
wyld_dandelyon: (joyouscat by Djinni)
Last weekend was Filk-OntariNo, the online version of Filk Ontario, so I attended from my living room.

It is so rewarding, after spending a month working hard on writing songs, to have people to sing with. It's better, of course, in person, in large part because internet lag prevents people from singing and playing along with you. But when you're at home there is no worry about driving home, or how many instruments you can bring, or even whether you can find allergen-free food to eat.

But I digress.

There was so much wonderful music, and I sang a lot! The zoom functions are really good at preventing filk hogging--most of the zoom filks are moderated, and people use the raise hand function, so there's no jumping in twice as fast as anybody else, unless, of course, the other people aren't raising their hands at whatever moment it is.

And I was all tuned up and my voice was doing great, and I still have new FAWM songs that people haven't heard (not counting the ones than I'm not yet ready to perform live), so when there weren't many people raising their hands, I did. Filling in lulls is a good thing, generally speaking. That seems to be better at inspiring people to sing than long silences or chatting.
I started out on Friday trying to follow my resolution to put songs back in their 3-ring binders after I sang them, but that didn't last long and then I had a pile of songs I'd sung already, like I usually do. I ended up with a thick stack, and kind of randomly decided to make a list.

To my surprise, I sang over 40 songs! 3/4 of those were my songs, and most of those were FAWM songs (14 from this year). Two were Iron Penguin contest songs--the Iron Penguin is an annual challenge at Filk Ontario, where you are given five words, one of which is always penguin, early in the con. The challenge is to include all the words in the song and then sing it for whoever shows up.

I did enter the Iron Penguin contest, as I usually do, and didn't win or place, but I have a new song I really like and will sing again, and that is always a personal win.

I played so much guitar, both onscreen and practicing, that my shoulder started to hurt (where the degenerative tendonitis and arthritis are) when I put my arm over even my slimmest guitar, so I tuned the autoharps and kept going (they let me hold my upper arm closer to my body, so that wasn't irritating the shoulder).

And my voice was just fine through the whole thing, which was such a blessing.

All in all, it was so much fun!

If someone wants to read the list it's here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/what-great-80696652

I am working on getting my songs up on Patreon as well -- lyric posts are always public.  www.patreon.com/Wyld_Dandelyon  Songs are generally posted under the song title, or you can search on hashtags filk and song.  I plan to be posting songs on Bandcamp soon, and will be revising my level descriptions to include downloadable mp3s for patrons soon too. 



Hello!

Mar. 23rd, 2023 12:20 am
wyld_dandelyon: (Happy Moth Artist)
I woke up this morning feeling like being a recluse for a day, and left the TV completely off for hours and didn't tune in to Eurofilk. The quiet was very restful, and I feel much more in a suitable shape to participate in Filk Ontari-No.

I did FAWM again this year, and feel it was very successful for me. I managed even more songs than last year's total, but more importantly, I think the average quality of the songs was better. I feel so lucky that (after Capricon) I was able to put almost everything else aside and focus on writing songs. It was also a lot of fun.

I did post a few of the songs over on my patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Wyld_Dandelyon) during February; I've been setting the rest (or most of the rest) to post there over time. I may post some of them here too, or maybe just redirect people over there. My plan is that lyrics and chords will be posted to that site in public posts, and as I figure out more of this self-publishing stuff, I'll put early copies of stuff I'm planning to put up on bandcamp in subscriber-only posts.

Right now, I'm putting links to the FAWM demos into the posts, with the warning that the demos won't be there forever (In the case of FAWM demos hosted on the FAWM site, the expected day they'll become unavailable is April 1.) Yeah, I ran out of free space on Soundcloud, and decided to support FAWM instead of Soundcloud this year.

Then I got sick, something with post-nasal drip and a tiny bit of low coughing and a couple episodes of dizziness, but mostly just so tired. There was one weekend daytime zoom filk where I got up after what's normally a full night's sleep and could barely keep my eyes open, and had to get up and move around to even be awake enough to play a song when it was my turn. The test said not covid, thankfully. But I went back to bed right after the filk and spent nearly all of the next two days sleeping, which slowly got better over the course of a week.

So now I'm behind on stuff like doing taxes and housework, but not critically so. Soon, I have to start seedlings too. And before that, buy some potting soil and seed starter mix. But life goes on, and that's a good thing.

Oh, and I found a guitar pick that will stay in my hand for a whole song! And it's comfortable for me to hold too. It's so cool when you find the right gear!
wyld_dandelyon: (Guitar Angel)
So, right now I'm told Bandcamp is the way to go, for self-publishing music. And I now am developing the skills to record myself, so I went to look at setting up an account, which I was told is totally simple.

And the first page, almost the first line, asked for my band name.

And I stopped and stared at that. I'd always figured I'd go with my name if I managed to do a solo album, but lately I've been following the rising career of a musician named Deirdre Murphy in Ireland. And you know, that would probably be OK, she's going for a much more mainstream music career than I'd be planning, but for some things, disambiguation is a good thing.

And it also occurs to me that I've been using the name Wyld Dandelyon for a very long time now, and that it wouldn't make a bad band name, especially for a filker (since filkers use the dandelion as our symbol). Never mind that I didn't create it to be a band name.

Well, I don't have to decide today.

People's thoughts, opinions, relevant experience, and ideas about what I should keep in mind as I decide, are all welcome at this point.
wyld_dandelyon: (Default)
Steel Skeletons of the Past

So, as I may have noted, I'm doing FAWM, which stands for February Album Writing Month. The stated goal is to write 14 songs (or more) in the month of February. But what it really is is a fun, welcoming place where people share challenges, prompts, games, and other inspiration for writing songs/tunes/music/lyrics/etc. If you share your song (and on the site, all musical efforts are titled songs, whether they have lyrics, recorded music, or both) people will listen and comment on them. It's pretty cool.

And because there's so much happening, you're bound to find inspiration if you show up and put a little effort into it. At least I find that to be true. It might be inspiration only for a practice song, one that I won't want to polish and learn to perform well, but there is value in practice too.

So, one of the types of challenge that they do on FAWM they call a "skirmish" In this challenge, someone states ahead of time that they are going to give a prompt at a certain time, and once they do, you have an hour (though it's OK to take longer) to write a song. You can do just lyrics or just music, but I've learned that you get better comments if you get a rough-finished piece done and recorded in that time, or not too much later, so it's there for people to comment on in the hour after the skirmish.

The topic for this skirmish was a zombie or other apocalypse, and I did get the recording done within that first hour. As with all first scratch recordings of very new things, it's imperfect. But if you want to listen, it's here: https://fawm.org/songs/127560/ The instrument I'm playing is a singing bowl, carefully played badly.

(If you have trouble seeing it on the FAWM site, it's also here: https://soundcloud.com/deirdre-moira-murphy/steel-skeletons-of-the-past-1 )

The image is from one of those AI art aps, which I edited to make "album art" for this track for FAWM.




Steel Skeletons of the Past
By Deirdre M. Murphy

Wild wet wind whistles through steel skeletons
Buildings that silently scraped the skies, now creaking
No longer quite covered by their flesh of concrete and glass
The glories of the past now lost in endless squeaking
A twisted wreck of rail, fallen, drowned by sleet and hail

Boxy shapes fallen and cracked open like oblong monster eggs
Once our ancestors sped smoothly, sometimes sleeping inside them
Now their rusty resting relics like gravestones block our path
Gulls, cats, rats, and pigeons flock, swooping and skittering
And pooping, always pooping, with none to clear the mess

Weeds grow in that abundance, tangled flowers and grasses
But food to feed the masses, no, that’s all in the past
We quest to find the temple, the hallowed halls of quiet
Where books on all topics shelter from snow and sun
We’re trying to start over, our small family of rovers

But we shall surely fail if we don’t know how this begun
The tangled, teeming wreckage, the wild canyons of the past
Are vast and there’s no telling where the temple may be found
The maps are long gone to bedding for the city’s new commanders
And we, poor feral humans, are lost in our species’ burial ground

Copyright 2022 Deirdre M Murphy (2/5/2022)

Wishes

Jan. 18th, 2022 08:28 pm
wyld_dandelyon: (Default)
Challenge #4

In your own space, make a list of things that you wish existed in fandom or elsewhere, and/or that you'd like someone to create or do for you.


So, things I wish for, besides the general stuff like more time and more health and more money, all of which matter, and none of which are gonna happen.  I have all the time in the world, just like everybody else, even if the chronic illness means I so often can't do as much as I want with it.  I also will acknowledge that some of the things I wish for aren't possible, or are so vanishingly unlikely that either way, I'm acknowledging that it's OK to want things you will never get, and it's also OK to express that wish as your truth, regardless of the realities of living in this world.

So, I'll list a few things, the stuff that comes to mind right now.  But my biggest impossible wish is for a TARDIS.  It would make going to cons with my instruments so very much easier!


1.  I got a looper from another filker, but I don't have the technical skills to set it up.  I'm sure there's a you tube video, but I'm still struggling to get my house back in order after the roof leaks and get my bedroom painted and still be doing music and writing (and maybe painting again soon).  I have a friend who said he'd come over and help me get things set up, but with covid and his own creative projects it hasn't happened yet.

2.  I'd love to find a remote (probably via zoom) role playing game to play in, something with an emphasis on roleplaying rather than fighting or rules-lawyering.

3.  I want more than one FAWM event in the year.  Certainly I couldn't sustain that level of focus on just one of my creative endeavors year-round, but I find the playfulness, inspiration, and creative connection of that event very valuable and energizing. 

4.  I want NaNoWriMo to happen in some other month than November.  November is just way too busy every single year for it to work as well for me as, say, January would.



wyld_dandelyon: (Default)
Challenge #1

In your own space, update your fandom information!

Fannishly, I guess I'm primarily a filker, though I love so many stories in print and other media.  I've been filking since my very first convention, Windycon One or Two, and that led to so many wonderful things in my life.  I got to play an autoharp there, which prompted my wonderful siblings to convince my father to buy me one, and that has led to so much of the joy in my life.  The music was a solace through college, where I was very much a misfit, and a joy at nearly every convention I've attended over the years. 

I write songs too, though I'm not as prolific as some of my filker friends.  Filk is what led me to learn about and try FAWM, which is February Album-Writing Month.  The challenge is to write at least 14 songs in the month of February--that is, enough for an album.  The first time I joined, I got a song or two, and counted it a good effort, since that was more songs than I'd have written otherwise.  One of the premises of FAWM is that practicing a thing makes you better at it.  So far, that has proved to be accurate, since every year I've written more songs in February than the previous year.  Last year I got more than 30!  (I'm still astonished).  I spent months getting to really know the best songs I wrote then, so I'm not aiming to keep up the increase in quantity this year.  Instead I'm hoping to increase quality and to also manage to keep up writing at least a little fiction on a daily or almost daily basis.

Writing.  I write fiction too, though not as prolifically as I want to be doing.  Some of that is the emotional and physical chaos.  I'm (still) working on getting my bedroom renovated so I can buy a new bed, and there are still things I haven't found after repeatedly having to hurry to move stuff out of the way of things like roof leaks so they wouldn't be damaged, or out of rooms that had to be emptied and repaired because of those leaks  Writing takes mental bandwidth, so all the things that steal that bandwidth slow me down.

Art.  I paint and do fabric arts.  The fabric arts I love the most are time-intensive, sewing lovely things by hand.  A lot of them owe a lot to crazy-quilt, bringing diverse fabrics and colors and threads together to repair a thing or make something new.  i do some machine sewing too, but the chaos in the house has not been helpful for that either.  The hand sewing is also a meditation for me, sometimes a prayer for the world, that all of the diverse people and beings of this world can come together harmoniously and in beauty.

This started out as a dress.  Initially I repaired the top part with some of the dark blue flowers you see here, but eventually that didn't hold and I turned it into an altar cloth.  I am slowly lining the last unlined bits, and hope one day to have reinforced the fragile initial fabric enough that it won't need any new repairs.


This is a painting I did of a frog leaping into the sky.  I took the picture with the paintbrush on it, and decided I liked the whimsy of having it look like the frog is grabbing it.  The painting is acrylics on an 8 inch square canvass.

So, that's a little about me and my creative life.  It's that openness to creativity, both making your own and celebrating what others make, that drew me to and keeps me in fandom, I think.  Nobody here tells me it's a waste of time to sing a song, read a book, or sew flowers and butterflies on something old.


wyld_dandelyon: (Default)
So, I've been participating in filk circles via zoom, and I got tired of seeing my face from below, so I bought one of those simple plastic gadgets for raising a computer higher on a table. They usually advertise them as lap desks for skinny teenagers or school kids, and maybe I could also use it for watching stuff in bed, though not quite as pictured on the box.

But anyway, what I discovered was that if I put my words and chords on a page in landscape mode, it sits on the keyboard really nicely, right below where I want to be looking so I can see the audience reaction when I know a song well enough to process extra input. So I've been going over songs that I want to sing in the open circles and songs I might want to put on the set list for my Philcon concert, and reformatting them to a two-column landscape format.

In the process, I've found songs that I thought I had in digital format, but actually only have on paper (and rectified that for some of them). But I also found a filk I wrote in February 2016, right before the current occupant of the White House started being the Republican front runner. I was very excited about learning to play this song, and spent a significant amount of time figuring out how to play it on guitar.

By this, I mean figuring out how the original artist had played it (more than one way, actually) and making notes about one of those ways, that my short fingers would be able to just manage if I practiced it a lot, and I planned to do that practice, so I could sing both the original and my filk of it. I was excited about it, I remember that now.

But until I found it (without the notes about how to play the guitar part), I'd forgotten completely about it.

awkward fingers spread wide on a guitar neck

I remember 2016, my growing horror about the person so many Republican preferred to the woman some of my friends dismissed as a "boring grandma". I remain horrified that people would vote for such a blatant con man with such terrible morals. The more I learned about him, the more appalled I was, and the more I hated seeing him on the television, hearing the horrible, hateful things he said and all the lies he told. It was and remains traumatic.

And I learned so many good things about Hillary Clinton, and about how the GOP had been spreading lies about her for her whole life. Seeing how the news people treated her like an inconsequential woman even though she'd been Secretary of State and a U.S. Senator, and treating the con man who'd bankrupted multiple businesses as a man of stature, over and over. That was traumatic too.

I remember picking up a needle and thread, mending clothes, sewing dozens of patches on a silk coat that I loved that was falling apart, calming my fears and praying. I remember wanting to crawl into bed and just stay there when November rolled around, but I'd committed to being at Windycon, doing panels and other things, so I got out of bed, packed for the convention, and headed out into the world.

But I don't remember what I was doing with my fingers to start learning to play this song. I know I wrote notes somewhere, and who knows--I may find them someday. But I don't have them now.

There've been other things in the intervening years, house disasters and financial worries and my Mom getting sick (emphysema and lung cancer, too advanced for treatment), and the daily assault of a man who wants all the attention all the time, has no moral compass whatsoever, and who wants to keep the adulation of people who openly espouse racist, sexist, and other equally horrible -ist beliefs. And now Covid-19.

But I've found this song again, and I want to sing it, so I'm back watching you-tube videos of the original artist, staring at his fingers, trying to do stuff my fingers don't know how to do yet. The way I see it, I should've been singing this song for four years now, and I haven't been. I can't undo any part of the past four years (and if it could, I'd use that power for more important things than this), but I can at least get back to working on this song now.

And I will sing it. Not this weekend. Maybe not this month--and with NaNo coming up, maybe not next month either. But one of these days, once I've finished figuring it out and practiced enough that I can do it justice, I will.


wyld_dandelyon: (Default)
It's a New Moon tonight, so I am once again offering to draw cards with the hope of sending some good energy out into the world, to spark some hope and creativity. You can ask about real life or a creative project. I can draw a card for you to meditate on, to represent the Guide you need right now, or to get you unstuck. I can draw a card for a character or can draw a card or cards for you to use as writing or art prompts.

I hope you will stop by my garden. It was wonderfully warm for a few days, but then a storm blew in with thunder and rain, and now it's snowing. But it's nice and warm inside. I have a little round glass table that's etched with a dragon design; we can sit there by candle light or turn the lava lamps on. You and I can share hot chocolate or tea and chat, and you can get a reading if you would like one. Or we could make art together, or sing songs. Both new friends and old are welcome.

Until the end of the weekend, for free one card readings, you can pick from the Brian Froud's Faeries Oracle, my combined Susan Seddon Boulet Animal Spirits and Goddesses cards, or the Shapeshifter Tarot. You can ask a question, ask for a Guide, ask for inspiration, or you can just ask for a card. I don't need to know what your question is, but you are welcome to share it with me if you like.

If I get $50 in tips, I'll use the cards I draw to inspire a painting, and I'll post progress drawings here for you all to see. So far I've received $25 of $50 for this drawing.

The first card is free (though tips are always appreciated). Tips also let you ask me to use any of my other decks, to request a private reading, or to draw a clarifying card. If you want a longer reading, send a direct message so we can agree on the type of reading and rate.

Please consider dropping something in the guitar case below. Readings take time and energy, and even though the Milwaukee winter, like everything else, has been affected by global warming, winter heat is pricey and old houses always need repair somewhere or other. Signal boosts are very much appreciated, and also earn you the right to ask for a clarifying card.

I understand all too well that when people don't have cash or spoons that is generally when they most need inspiration! Don't be afraid to ask for a card if you can't tip.

If you tip, it's helpful to me for you to mention it here so I can connect your paypal information with your request. Tips should be at least $1 (Paypal charges fees). If that doesn't work for you, drop me a message and we'll work something else out.

I've written before about why I do readings and some of the decks I use here, feel free to hop over and check me out. I'll wait.

I will reply to all requests. In the highly unlikely event that the number of requests nears my limits, I'll close this card draw by adding a clear note at the top of the post rather than risk leaving anyone without a response. This weekend, there's a rally for health care and a house filk on Saturday, so there may be a bit of a wait if you leave your request while I'm out. However, I intend to stay open at least through Sunday night, and longer for paid readings since, between the holidays and being in these days of low LJ usage, people may find the post late.

Thank you, and Blessed Be!

As always, these readings are for entertainment and inspiration only. See my "Dandelyon's Readings" page if you have questions.

wyld_dandelyon: (outpost picnic)
and has been since yesterday.

So I'm going to go re-read the short story that came to me earlier today, before I realized time was getting away from me and if I wanted to go to the house filk, we had to get going!

I could do another F post instead, I suppose, which would be F is for Filk - the most vital and interesting folk music community I've found. Of course, I'm biased, and have been since I found filk back as a teenager. I've found many friends in the filk community, as well as lots of good music and stories shared.

The filk was small, but there was some good music, and a chance to catch up with what's been happening with some friends, including medical problems, a car accident that totaled the car but happily didn't injure my friend, classes taken with the plan of a change of occupation, and somebody's grand-daughter announced an impromptu singing contest, giving the winner she chose the grand prize--a stick of gum! (I was interested that in announcing winners, the non-singing spouse/SOs of singers were considered part of the winning team.)

Kids often give you a window on the values they're seeing around them, but the image they mirror for you isn't always what you expect it to be!
wyld_dandelyon: (Default)
I got all done with my C post for the A-Z blog challenge, and then I remembered I'd promised to post the words to my Coyote song here. So, two posts, one on DreamWidth, and one over at http://wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com/200823.html.

Besides, songs are poetry, and April is Poetry Month!!!

Coyote Afoot
By Deirdre M. Murphy

Am C Am
My kitchen draped in plastic, the food hidden away,
Dm7 FM7 Dm7
A dozen pots of dyes in a rainbow were arrayed,
Em Am
In folds, knots, and spirals white t-shirts all were laid,
Em Am Dm7 Am (or C before choruses)
I’d been at work for hours, and my nerves were quite frayed.

Then, from up near the ceiling, a white-clad man splashed down
And landed in my dyes—a clumsy red-haired clown—
He admired his new-dyed suit, ignoring my fierce frown,
And with a tie-dyed grin said, “Let’s go paint the town!”

Em F
I demanded, “Who are you, and how’d you get in here?”
Em F
That cocky lad just grinned a smile from ear to ear,
G Am
Said, “Call me Coyote. My dear, you need not fear—“
Dm7 C
My look must have made my disbelief quite clear
 
Em F Dm7
He stood and looked me in the eyes, and said,
Dm Dm7 Dm
“You sing, ‘The Gods are Alive and Magick is Afoot”
Bm F
Then why so much surprise  when I appeared before your eyes
Em
And tripped through your dyes—
Dm Em
Did you think your Gods would meekly stay put?
 
Then the young man shifted to dispel any doubt
To a four-footed form; he tossed my dyes about
And the clothes were all spattered with bright-colored rain
Then suddenly my guest wore human form again

The Gods are alive, and Coyote’s underfoot
And his feet are full of dye and his eyes are black as soot
And the shirts are all dyed now, though how well I cannot guess
And he asked me out again, and I heard myself say, “yes”.

The evening was amazing, Coyote sure can dance
Whenever I felt tired, he revived me with a glance
When I went to rinse the new-dyed t-shirts (the next day)
They were marked with the bright prints of a coyote pair at play
 
Coyote is alive, and magick is afoot
And he sure isn’t tame, and he will not stay put
I didn’t believe he could just show up one day
And I don’t know if I hope he’ll go—or hope he’ll stay.

Copyright © 2001 (2/12/01) by Deirdre M. Murphy, all rights reserved
.
wyld_dandelyon: (outpost picnic)
I've been fighting off some bug, apparently, and it finally left me open to getting a bronchial infection which traveled up into the sinuses. I finally got in to see my doctor this morning, and started antibiotics, and while my head cleared and I became less exhausted feeling, it turned my nose into a faucet. I'm in no shape to enjoy a filk, and certainly don't want to share what I've got.

*sigh*

I missed another recent house filk taking My Angel to have a tooth abscess lanced.

And of course, the disruption of My Angel falling and splitting her head open while I wasn't near enough to help (except over the phone) is still too-fresh in my mind.

I know that I've been dealing with the allergies and asthma and related stuff like being susceptible to these dumb infections for pretty much my whole life, but that doesn't make it less of a drag when it happens.

I know tomorrow I'll be feeling more energetic, and might even be up to going out--but tomorrow, there won't be a filk to go to.

In other news, I got a Kindle Fire, and someone sent me a mobi file, but although the kindle app on my computer can read it, the kindle itself can't. I'm confused! Am I missing something obvious because my brain is infection-addled, or what?
wyld_dandelyon: (outpost picnic)
So, the fan GOH at Windycon decided to bring a guest, a harpist who had never been to a filk.

Such things happen, you say, and of course that's true.

But go thou and look at her Kickstarter campaign video--she made this and started raising money to make cool filk videos before ever going to a science fiction convention: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1242097495/erin-hill-the-sci-fi-harp-girl-makes-a-music-video

I got to be part of her first filk ever!  Thanks, Hugh!

Go, check her out, regardless of whether you have money to support her efforts. 
wyld_dandelyon: (outpost picnic)
So, the fan GOH at Windycon decided to bring a guest, a harpist who had never been to a filk.

Such things happen, you say, and of course that's true.

But go thou and look at her Kickstarter campaign video--she made this and started raising money to make cool filk videos before ever going to a science fiction convention: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1242097495/erin-hill-the-sci-fi-harp-girl-makes-a-music-video

I got to be part of her first filk ever!  Thanks, Hugh!

Go, check her out, regardless of whether you have money to support her efforts. 
wyld_dandelyon: (Disintegrations and Defenestrations! by)
I was wondering why I've been so tired the last few days. Stress of a new job? Plausible. So, Saturday I slept in, and got up to do a few online and at-home chores, and spent some time submitting stories--enough to not only make my 10 submissions for the month for the first time this year, but to nearly fill up the empty spots for last month too. And I got another "your story made it past the first read" note, making two stories being held at anthologies I'd really love to be in right now.

Then I dressed to go to the housefilk, realized I needed to online-pay a bill before I left, and started to yawn.

I hadn't been up that long! How could I be tired?

My Angel and I headed out the door with instruments, got in the car and I started to sneeze. There was this delicate floral aroma -- "Angel, are you" *sneeze* *sneeze* "wearing perfume?"

"No! When do I wear perfume?"

. . . Spring Allergens!

I stopped at the side of the road to spray my nose with allergy medicine--an advantage of the new diet is I can use those more often without getting nosebleeds, and we headed onward.

I spent most of the next day asleep, or functionally asleep. I totally forgot my plan to do readings on Beltaine. My phone reminded me of my plan to submit a story to one of the online magazines, but their submissions page says both "we are currently closed" and "we will reopen to submissions on May 1". I broke down and sent a query today. I'd really like to send that story there next, but if they're staying closed, I don't want the story lost in electronic limbo.

The Muse Fusion might be this weekend; if it's not, and the allergies abate a bit, maybe I'll do readings then.

In the meantime, Happy Spring Pollen Season, everyone!
wyld_dandelyon: (Disintegrations and Defenestrations! by)
I was wondering why I've been so tired the last few days. Stress of a new job? Plausible. So, Saturday I slept in, and got up to do a few online and at-home chores, and spent some time submitting stories--enough to not only make my 10 submissions for the month for the first time this year, but to nearly fill up the empty spots for last month too. And I got another "your story made it past the first read" note, making two stories being held at anthologies I'd really love to be in right now.

Then I dressed to go to the housefilk, realized I needed to online-pay a bill before I left, and started to yawn.

I hadn't been up that long! How could I be tired?

My Angel and I headed out the door with instruments, got in the car and I started to sneeze. There was this delicate floral aroma -- "Angel, are you" *sneeze* *sneeze* "wearing perfume?"

"No! When do I wear perfume?"

. . . Spring Allergens!

I stopped at the side of the road to spray my nose with allergy medicine--an advantage of the new diet is I can use those more often without getting nosebleeds, and we headed onward.

I spent most of the next day asleep, or functionally asleep. I totally forgot my plan to do readings on Beltaine. My phone reminded me of my plan to submit a story to one of the online magazines, but their submissions page says both "we are currently closed" and "we will reopen to submissions on May 1". I broke down and sent a query today. I'd really like to send that story there next, but if they're staying closed, I don't want the story lost in electronic limbo.

The Muse Fusion might be this weekend; if it's not, and the allergies abate a bit, maybe I'll do readings then.

In the meantime, Happy Spring Pollen Season, everyone!
wyld_dandelyon: (Default)
A poem for the full moon, and for solstice.  This one also has a tune, though I'm still lacking a way to play it for you except in person.  One of these days, that will change.  Though I did sing it at Barisha's housefilk tonight. 

After I laid down for a brief nap and woke up six hours later...


Goddess Cycling

by: Deirdre M. Murphy


The Maiden Emerging sprouts the seeds
She blesses our lives with crops and weeds
She wakes up everything
The summer’s gifts to bring
She knows our dreams precede our deeds

The Mother of Bounty bids us grow,
The full flower of loving now to know
The height of youth and health
Nurturing autumn wealth
She cares for all the seeds we sow

The Lady of Harvest fills our needs
Her bounty produces our new seeds
She comes with wrinkles clear
She shows us winter’s near
Death comes to everyone she feeds

The Old Crone of Waiting brings us snow
She shows each of us our time to go
She keeps us safe through death
She promises rebirth
And in the spring, our seeds will grow

Copypright 2004 Deirdre M. Murphy.  Most rights reserved.

I wrote this on October 27, 2004*, during a total lunar eclipse; some called it a “blood moon” since it was so red; after viewing the photos, however, I thought of it as the “Chocolate Moon”.

*except for the line I rewrote today. Amazing what happens when you revisit a song after more practice.

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