Hello! Welcome to my August Way In to Imagine and Nourish your Wild Art You!
Have you ever wondered how artists, composers, writers and creatives of all kinds get their ideas and turn them into something magical? This Substack delves into different creative ideas and starting points that I like to use, and I hope it will be a fun adventure for us both. I’d love you to interact, try things out and share your own ideas back with me, if you’d like to?
SECRET…….my secret mission is to get everyone to feel that their own creativity is important, valid and beautiful …..SHHHHH!
if you find that idea challenging, don’t worry, just join me on the ride and see what comes along!
It may be that you are super busy and it’s not so easy to find time for spending time wandering the wild and being playful. Don’t worry, if that’s you. We will find tiny Ways In to imagine and nourish your wild creative self that won’t take more than a minute called ‘1 minute starter’. (Maybe you can invent your own 1 minute starters and share back? I’d love that!) The idea is to start to find nourishing moments to reset and reconnect.
In Wild Art You - Imagine Nourish I’ll be sharing with you:
my creative artist diary
some wild and whacky internal family systems characters I have unearthed in My Wild Family
60 Wild Songs where I go out into Nature and improvise something to sing to the landscape, as a wild creature in a wild habitat would sing
This month’s CREATIVE INVITATION
Ok, here’s something to try…
Wild Connection 1 minute starter: spend 1 minute thinking about what your wild, free pursuits were as a kid? Take a moment to think back and see what you can recall…. Maybe there’s something you could reconnect with?
As a kid, creative wildness was an important part of me. Finding and painting pebbles, making friends with beetles in the daffodil patch, dancing wildly around my bedroom and rolling down hills. I was often alone as a child and lucky to have plenty of time to explore my world in the family garden.
This month’s MY WILD FAMILY
Last Autumn I spent some time (starting with one minute…) reconnecting with my wild child memories. I drew this picture and called it ‘Beth’s garden’. It helped me remember there was a daffodil patch I loved to crawl around in.
I realised I missed my childhood garden adventures and decided to recreate the daffodil patch, planting bulbs out last Autumn on a grassy bank in my current garden in Malvern. Then - hey presto! this Spring I sat in amongst the newly grown daffy stems to meet up with beetles and other crawling creatures…
I’m finding that reconnecting with my Wild Art self helps me to feel more nourished and generally makes me feel happy, even just thinking about it.
This formed the first part of my exploration of what is called Internal Family Systems or IFS. I’ll be delving into this in the next posts, and I will share how healing it has been for me. I feel calmer, more connected. Also, if something throws me off my centre, I know have ways to explore what is going on and how to manage things better.
I was given a book called No Bad Parts by my very wise step-daughter and this first introduced me to IFS. It is a book full of hope and action – giving you short exercises you can try by yourself. It has helped me heal in different ways and I highly recommend having a look.
The title of the book refers to the fact that the author and psychotherapist Richard Schwartz - in all his forty years or so of working with IFS - has never encountered a ‘part’ of someone that didn’t have a good intention to protect the person in some way. This may sound a bit odd, but do check out the book or videos and see for yourself. I’ve found it absolutely fascinating… here are some of the parts I’ve reconnected with and found peace with…
· Beth the daffodil/beetle enthusiast
· The rock thrower
· the slug
· Evie the grieving mother
· the Black Knight
· Elizabeth
In future posts I’ll be explaining more about how my journey has helped me heal and feel happier in my own skin, and introducing you to these folks that make up my own Mappa Mundi…
This month’s Creative Artist Diary
This month I’d like to share some of the work I’m currently doing creating a large-scale cantata called Passia. My brief is to compose a retelling of the Passion story through the voices of five of the women at the foot of the cross. Researching this has been an extraordinary adventure… and I am still learning and gathering more all the time. It feels rich beyond measure.
I’m composing for the wonderful voices of Papagena and it is one of the great joys of my work to collaborate with performers of this calibre. We have already had one workshop session looking at the first seven sketches with words ranging from new lyrics written by Sarah Meyrick and Neta Shlain to Hebrew phrases and new words by me too. I’ve recently brought in a new element, thanks to singer Margaret Lingas. She introduced me to the work of Kassia the 9th century Byzantine composer, poet and visionary.
Here’s Papagena singing their own version of Hide and Seek by Imogen Heap
Passia will include the voices of angels and mourning songs from Eastern Europe, and bringing the women surrounding Jesus to life.
The premiere performance is on Monday 30th March 2026 at Great Malvern Priory and Papagena will be touring the work around the UK during 2026. If you would like to discuss organising a performance near you - just let me know! I’ll be sharing the dates on my website
I am now bringing all the different ideas together into the final score - it’s a bit like assembling a musical jigsaw! At the moment only certain things are fixed and everything might move, change, be removed, repeated or extended. It’s a thrilling time for me as the creator - as the music starts to take over and demand certain things should happen. I keep my mind very open during this phase - anything can happen. It’s very satisfying when suddenly I have the first ten minutes of music mapped out. The final piece will be around 30-40 minutes - so there’s lots still to be done.
Here’s another piece of mine setting the words of the Lux Aeterna sung by Ex Cathedra from my Gentle Flame album that plays with some of the same aspects of darkness and light that Passia will.
If you have any questions about my creative process I’d be very happy to respond!
This month’s 60 WILD SONGS
In the weeks leading up to my 60th birthday (back in 2024) I decided I would use my 60th year on this beautiful planet as a stimulus for trying things I have never done before (while I still can!).
One idea I’ve always had was about singing - outside – and finding a way to sing freely in response to whatever wild landscape I find myself in. The problem was, I couldn’t do it. I would stand on top of a magnificent hilltop thinking – I wish I could sing something….! But what? I felt an idiot, and very self conscious!
So I came up with the idea of 60 Wild Songs – as a personal quest to find ways to do this. I decided that I would fix a certain date and location for a song and then record whatever happened each time. I thought that if I set out to do sixty of these songs, then by the time I reached the last ones, I might feel more confident about the idea…! As it was even talking about it made me feel anxious, excited and nervous.
On April 25th, 2024 (my 60th birthday) I set out and recorded a very short, very very nervous Wild Song 1. Since then, I have recorded four more, each in a different location and at a different time of day. The experience fills me with joy!!!
Pushing through the absolute freeze and fear I feel before going to create each Wild Song has been really eye-opening. The first five Wild Songs are etched into my memory like beautiful visions. After having completed a Wild Song, I experience a beautiful sense of euphoria. I feel more connected to myself, and to the landscape. I feel more connected to the earth and the air, and to all the creatures around me.
I still feel extremely nervous and very exposed when I set out to create a Wild Song, I’m hoping that this will subside as I keep doing it! My hope is that this will start to feel normal, to be able to sing freely like a bird, without self-consciousness or the inner critic getting in the way. - We’ll see!
I will be sharing some of the details about each Wild Song in the next posts and if you feel you might like to try creating your own Wild Song, do give it a try! I’d love to hear about your experiences….
And finally…
I offer this Substack freely as I believe strongly that we should be all be generous as a first principle. If you are also able to support me with a paid subscription, that will help me enormously! Because…
We all need money to pay for stuff!
I will make exciting things happen involving other artists and the wider public if I have access to more money (if you’d like to give me a large donation I’m up for that!)
Having paid subscribers validates my work - this for me is important as I still feel I need the approval and support of others to help me do my creative work
It supports the creative industry in a sustainable way allowing me an artist can self-define my focus and concentrate on creating (rather than having to write endless grant applications unpaid in order to get funding)
It will give you a warm and fuzzy feeling, and make you feel like you are making a difference! Thank you!
I love that you have recreated your daff patch!