Where do the songs come from? Where do the stories start? Do they happen in another realm untouched by linear time? Do they twist and turn through the layers of the worlds trying to reach us in any way they can? Not all songs and stories are born this way, but some seem to have a life of their own. . .
I am asked by my bellydance teacher Sera Solstice to write a song for our troupe. She instructs me to create something that will invite the dancers and the audience to travel into the unknown. A song that will help shift the listener’s consciousness into to a dream-like, feeling state. I sit down to write, and a vast experience pours through. I hear a story of longing, the sacred vowel sounds AAA-EEE–IIII–OOOO, the sounds that create the worlds. I sing them into my computer’s speakers as tiny birds outside my window sing along.
A few months later I am approached by my friend Flambeaux to create a fire performance with him. He tells me that there is a steel horse with a flaming mane that I HAVE to ride, and asks me about the things that inspire me as a performer. A story is woven about a young woman named Casara with powers of dreaming that stretch far beyond normal reality. She is a ‘dreamwalker’ who can take her physical body with her into other worlds, and rides a spirit horse made of fire on her dream journeys. She sings ‘The Calling’ to open the way between the worlds, and walks a hero’s path through great tests and dreamscapes made of fire. The song echos through the show as an anthem of the unknown, and a call to know what lies beyond.
Casara–she is with me now as I write. A strange character who is me-but-not-me. She sings a song that I wrote, and enacts real-but-not-real fire rituals to massive crowds in warehouses across Brooklyn. I can’t help but think that the song (and Casara?) had this planned for me all along. Dreams don’t make straight lines, and stories are not always what they seem. ‘The Calling’ is a song and a story that is not yet finished. It continues to lead me on an adventure between the worlds–leaving tiny bread crumbs to follow as we lift the veil again and again.