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Read the latest reviews, ratings, and descriptions of Lori Hawk's new CD release, Alive in this Dream. This page includes articles, interviews, and commentary from Musical Discoveries, 2Walls Webzine, Amazon.com, Celebrity Cafe, and BBC Nottingham music…and more. | ||||||||||
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Bound for the Sacred: The Initiation Today I am a small stone, mean and hard. I don't fit back into the mountain anymore. I have been expelled and time has worn me smooth. Too smooth. I can no longer cling to the hillside. I roll, limb over limb, a starfish cast back into the sea. I sit at the bottom of the hill surveying the scatter. Rocks everywhere. Some bigger, some smaller, sharper, rougher, smoother. It doesn't matter. Some are fearless, some are consumed with doubt, some have mastered their thinking, some have no thoughts at all, some scream on the inside, some hum quietly to themselves, some try to remember, some calculate endlessly, some lavish in fantasy, some crave so much more, some wish it were quieter here. It doesn't matter. Whatever happens here just does. The mountain can barely see us, and frankly, doesn't appear to be watching anyway. The dust under us is us tomorrow. We are only here now. It doesn't matter that it doesn't matter. A meteorite never has this dilemma, this fantasy that things are moving too fast, too slow. A single silvery sliver of light crashing to the earth, an explosion of dust. Spontaneous combustion. That is, if everything goes as planned. It's hard not to leave something behind, to remain intact somehow. It's possible that surviving is worse than evaporating. Meaning is meaningless. It is arbitrary. It is in constant flux. We watch it blow by in the corpses of yesterday. And then, of course, we seek meaning in what we have witnessed in the watching. We revise. We retell. We wait for a sign. We embrace our beliefs like a little child, pulling our knees up under chin, crouching in the cave, warming ourselves against the stillness of a disinterested universe. "There is hope here, there is hope here," we chant to ourselves. We collect stones from outside and make a circle. Light a fire. Warm our hands. Firelight sparkles against our tear-stained faces. Why? Why? Why? We ask. We wait. We dig in the sand absent-mindedly, stirring our tears with the dust of meteors and mountains, trying to get back home. We are making the potion, we suddenly think. Yes. Definitely making the potion, we decide. We blend the mixture with care. Teardrops. Sand. Smoke. Precious spiced oil. We roll the paste in our hands, smooth it over our skin, our face, limbs, belly, and back. This is the cure. Yes. This is the cure. We have completed our own circle. We are the mountain, covered with the souls of everything. We dance around the fire and scream at an indifferent universe. Everything must go, we decide. We gather twigs and carry flames to the dead brittle wasteland. The trees. The moss. The hills. The world is on fire. We laugh and dance and howl. Everything is alive now. Everything. Crackling, full of heat, full of passion, full of meaning. We flash and turn, colored with orange light and curls of soot. The creator. The destroyer. We clap our hands together, breathing in our power, coughing out its smoke, flinching as it bites our skin and burns our eyes. Nearly surrounded, we retreat. Away from the hills. Down and away. The ocean laps at our feet. We climb onto her back and watch the blazing spectacle from the cool dark silence. Hah! We too can be an indifferent universe. The ocean kisses us lightly, salty like so many tears. There is no longer room for crying, she sighs. She holds us in her lacy folds, lifting us to see the beauty, pulling us away when we can no longer bear it. Her sweet breath plays every song, every scream, every cry, every whisper, every thunderous roar as the sphere is pelted with fiery stones from an indifferent universe. She is our mother. We nestle close, trying to hold her as she holds us. She turns to a million droplets in our hands. She laughs and splashes us gently as we try and try and try again to hold what cannot be held. We sink into her, exhausted, eyes above the surface, letting her win. She always wins, we think dreamily. She moans melodramatically and sends a great, sparkling wave to lift us, tease us, make us forget, make us remember. Salt and spray cling to face and hair. The last muddied traces of our ceremonial dance mingle in sea foam and moonlight. "Rest here," she says, "I will take you home." ©2006 Lori Hawk, September 19, 2006 The Storm Are we there yet? No, we stopped. I was thrown from the car and I can't find my sunglasses. I can't move on without them. Too bright. No one needs to see so much that it hurts. "If thine eye offend thee," and so on. There must be a cliché that fits here. One that will snap into place like the last piece of the red-covered bridge in the puzzle. For a second, it looked like nothing. A piece, tried again and again and again. It never fit before. Now, suddenly, it does. Finish sitting on that egg. Push it out of the nest. Jeez. You've kept it warm long enough. See the cracks in the surface? They are signs. Signs that you will carry on long after the fairytale has ended. Or not. Thus it goes with fairytales and clichés. We never really know, do we? What lies hidden beneath the shell? What lies hidden in the soul? What lies hidden in the light? So, what hides waiting there? Well, pick him up and let's move on. How can that be, you have not bore? "Are you a cliché or fairytale?" I am the flame that burns forever. I am the hand and you are the fist. You are the prince, forever seeking. "The meek shall, the meek must,…" "Can you hear me, you casting stones near the back?" Firmness What lies hidden beneath the shell? What lies hidden in the soul? What lies hidden in plain view? What is revealed within this poem? Bound for the Sacred: The Initiation She picked up a conch and saw the small creature inside pull in a deep breath fearfully. She waded out into the lagoon, just far enough to give some depth to the conch's new future, but not so far as to let the coral tear at her feet. She tipped the conch over and it stared back, puzzled, as it dropped into the water, turned twice and settled on the sandy bottom. Why? Why does the universe threaten us, and then let us go again? Would the conch return to his brethren, revising the old myths? "The people do not strip us from our shells, eat our meat, and turn us into blast horns that awake the dead and unite them with the living." No worries. Most of the conches laughed at the old religion, its myths, its warnings. Everyone knew conches ascend from the waters, lifted in the golden rays that reside between the topmost ocean, far above the sand, and below the shimmer of sky. It was all so confusing. The girl wandered away, not sensing the tremor she had caused on the ocean floor below. Each of her steps caused a pillar of sand to stir and rise. Old myths, replaced by new theories, began to mingle together and turn like a gentle hurricane reaching up to the surface. "Do not step on the butterfly--all of our futures are at stake," whispered the wind. She leaned into the water and began to swim when she noticed the ocean had drawn away, pulling her down to the sand where the conch lay, still pondering over the old ways and the old myths. She put out her hands to stop her fall. The conch rolled onto its back, at first wondering if he had lost his fear too soon. Then he surrendered. The girl dove deep and swam into his shell. For the first time, he could actually see her clearly. She sat down next to him and said, "Tell me your stories." He considered some of the revisions he had already planned, then decided against changing anything at all. The conch began, "All of this is true…" ©2006 Lori Hawk, August 17, 2006 The watchword was "patient". Be patient. This will all be over soon. Are you the patient? No. I mean, well, I don't know. Is this a dream? Aren't we all...patiently waiting for something and by definition, being patient? I look around at the living, the healthy, casting spells into the fire and breathing in the smoke with passion, with abandon, with urgency. What is patience? Is it, like our new dog, learning to sit when you really ache to run? Is it the cold glacier water, just behind the melting ice, waiting for a well-deserved break, a tiny crack, the right moment to burst forth? We know it's something we should all strive for. But I am so tired of "should"."Should" is the sail that caused me to wash upon this shore. "Should" is the nagging voice that pokes and prods and doesn't really have a real solution anyway. "Should" wakes us in the middle of the night to ask us questions about our intentions, further stretching our ability to be patient. So maybe patience is something different, some unexplored path down the road. ©2006 Lori Hawk, August 17, 2006 Making progress, understanding our mission in this life, and asking "How can I serve today?" It all makes sense somehow. The maelstrom of energy rushing out, rushing in, churning ideas into concrete plans, building bridges, clearing brush, destroying old dilapidated, sun-dried, overused, undernourished faded boards. Pounding into place, fresh, clean, gleaming pine. We are all carpenters. We are also all houses, bridges, the weight being carried, and the carrier. We'll keep moving up this hill. The wind will blow, sometimes parching us, sometimes lifting our burdens by pushing us along. A comet seeking some worthwhile target, some fertile ground to seed with other possibilities: other outcomes commingling with other comets, racing around the night sky. Look, can you see it? A small boat came to a stillness in the water above. A soft pool. A young woman dropped a line into the water, climbed out of the boat and followed the line to down to the bottom. Picking up a small stone and placing it in her pocket, she swam to the surface. And somewhere, way out between the spiral galaxies, another comet planned its escape. ©2006 Lori Hawk, August 10, 2006
I can hear the wind chimes in my dreams and I follow the sound out into the fields. What a morning! No sound. Just silence. Even the chickens down the street are just listening now. Stretching. Waiting. So many flying dreams, so long ago. How did that go anyway? Lean into the wind. Let it take you where it wants to. Flying out to the coast. Skimming the trees. I see a silver sliver of coastline. Touch down. Touch down. The wind chimes tap at my window, calling me back to morning. And like my cat, I'm not sure if this is the dream or this is the other dream. ©2006 Lori Hawk, August 10, 2006
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