Three Live Videos from the OBOD Summer Gathering 2009

As the title says, here are three live videos from the OBOD Summer Gathering. The first is Hills they are Hollow, followed by Lughnasadh Dance, and lastly the encore of Chuck Berry’s Johnny B Goode. What a great night it was!

1952 Vincent Black Lightning – Damh the Bard live

One of the joys of playing any instrument is playing your favourite songs – something I like to sometimes indulge when I play live. Here’s a little video taken from the audience at this year’s Wessex Gathering of the classic Richard Thompson song, 1952 Vincent Black Lightning.

Song of Awen video from OBOD Summer Gathering

Hi peeps,

Here’s a video from the OBOD Summer Gathering concert at Glastonbury Town Hall. My fellow musicians are Paul Newman (Guitar and backing vox) and Keiron Sibley (Djembe). As I watched this back I can see the potential of some gigs with a ‘Damh the Bard band’ in the future. Both of these people are good friends and completely intuitive musicians. As I say at the beginning of the video, none of the evening had been rehearsed, but when you’re playing with musicians of this standard it doesn’t need to be. Enjoy!

Video Blog of the OBOD Summer Gathering

My good friend Paul Newman has produced a ‘fly on the wall’ video diary of this years OBOD Summer Gathering in Glastonbury. It’s brilliantly done, funny, some great clips of some of the eisteddfod performances. Do check it out here

Tales from the Road – To Roadwater!

I seem to be spending more and more time in the West Country these days. From mine and Cerri’s lovely weekend break on Dartmoor, to the PF Wessex, Wessex Gathering, Plymouth moot, PF Devon and Cornwall conference, and this weekend just past a gig in the beautiful village of Roadwater, and the famous OBOD Summer Gathering.

I played at Nature’s Way, the Roadwater Village Hall ‘moot’ last year when it had been organised by Carolyn and Edward. I was shocked to hear that Carolyn had passed into the Summerlands since then, but one of her wishes was that I make a return trip to the Nature’s Way event and play there again this year. Last year’s had been a great night, so I was really looking forward to getting back there again!

We set off, a car full of people and ’stuff’ on the Thursday afternoon. Me and Cerri were taking our friends Rachel and Dave with us as they were helping as part of the team for the OBOD Gathering. The journey was a breeze and we arrived in time for a brief hello to Edward before heading to the village pub for some healthy chips and cheese, nice. I left them finishing this glorious culinary delight and headed for the village hall to set up. Last year I’d played the event on the main floor and acoustically, but this year they’d organised a full PA system, and I was now on the stage. Those who have seen me live will know that I far prefer the acoustic set, getting right in with you all and sharing a good singalong together, but more and more I’m playing to larger audiences and I really need to get used to the stage/PA thing so I thought, let’s go for it. The sound check went well and easy and people began to arrive. I chatted to people, drank my usual vast quantity of water to lubricate the old vocal chords, then waited backstage for Edward’s introduction. Applause, and I was on.

I think one of the reasons I’m not keen on amplification is that is tends to drown out the voices of the audience singing, and the lights on the stage can be quite strong and blinding. You might be playing to a full house but you can only see the first two rows of people from the stage, and I love to see the audiences faces, and engage with you fully. So I was not in my comfort zone, but I could see shadowy shapes of people moving to the rhythms of the songs, and when the songs were quieter I could hear their voices singing. All was well, and it was a great night once more. I even got to play a few new songs from the forthcoming new CD which was great.

It would now appear that my uptempo concerts should come with a health warning. I was told by a friend there that, whilst she was dancing to me and Keiron at the PF Devon and Cornwall conference in March, she tore her Achilles tendon, and now has to go for an operation to get it repaired! Happily we had a laugh about it, and I do hope she gets better soon!

I asked for the house lights to be put up while I took the piccie below. What a great night it was! Thanks to Edward for his hospitality and great conversation deep into the wee hours of the morning, and to everyone who made the journey to hear me live again.

Moving On

This has been an amazingly magical weekend – one I really needed. I am writing this at the base of the White Lady waterfall in Lydford Gorge. A place of such peace and beauty that words on a screen cannot ever portray it, or even come close.
I have had time to think and reflect – to take stock. I have also had time to remember and to reconnect with my spirituality. It’s significant for me that to do this I had to return to my birthplace in the great South West. We went to Boscastle yesterday. Our first visit in maybe 3 years. A lot has changed since the flood disaster but I’m happy to say that, even though much of the village has been rebuilt, it has kept it’s charm and magic.
It was raining but I still needed to walk to the top of the cliffs. Cerri chose to stay in the village so I began my walk along the craggy path. With each step I took I found myself becoming more and more emotional. Until, when I reached the brow of the hill, saw the open Atlantic, heard the gulls calling, the roar of the crashing ocean, I was completely overwhelmed. The Welsh call this feeling ‘Hiraeth’, an overwhelming longing for home. Now as Spirit of Albion says I love this Isle entirely, but there is something about this granite penninisula that fills me up. Maybe all ex pat Cornish feel the same? I don’t know. But I do know that this ex pat Cornishman is feeling reconnected and alive again after walking along ‘Cornwall’s Rocky Shore’.

Grimspound revisited

I’m writing this inside the main roundhouse in Grimspound on Dartmoor. I haven’t been here since Cerri and I initiated a couple of Grove members into the Druid grade, which was at least 5 years ago!
This place is so magical. As I sit here I can hear no sound of human activity. It’s a silence rarely experienced in this modern age, but one that the builders of this place would have known well. I think of all of the sites on this beautiful isle that I’ve visited this one I inspires me the more than most. I guess that’s why I wrote the song. And here I am sitting I the same spot 7 years on and it brings that same feeling once more. It really will be here for all to see, through the circles of time.

Just take 10 minutes to read this

Just take 10 minutes to read this – and be inspired!

The Unforgettable Commencement Address by Paul Hawken to the Class of 2009, University of Portland, May 3, 2009

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there.

But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food, but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING.  The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is
happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day:
climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the
world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David
James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way. There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and
the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized
themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit.. And today tens of millions
of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organizations, of companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present  we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross  domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on  healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the  future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the  other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people  and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich,  it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally
you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our
fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90
percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each
human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe formed  of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who
is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are
conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past. Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be
ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened,
not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

Paul Hawken is a renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmental activist, and author of many books, most recently Blessed Unrest: How
the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. He was presented with an honorary doctorate of humane letters by University president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., in May, when he delivered this superb speech. Our thanks especially to Erica Linson for her help making that moment possible.
www.paulhawken.com

Trailer – New Documentary – Druids

About this video:

‘A documentary about the nature of modern druidry, its historical origins and spiritual message made by the Holistic Channel www.holisticchannel.org.uk‘…holisticchannel

Playing Catchup – Tales from the Road – The Arena House Concert

It’s been some time since I posted a proper blog entry. I’ve been so busy playing music, recording, and writing that The Bardic Blog lay sad and neglected for which I apologise. Another reason is that I’ve been posting updates and photos to my Twitter account as things have happened, so it feels like I’ve already written about everything already. But I know a lot of you readers are not Twitter people, so I’m going to try to keep up with things a bit better from now on.

I’ll start this bit of catch up with the house concert I played at the Plymouth moot on the 25th April. I played a number of house concerts last year and thoroughly enjoyed the intimacy of this type of performance, but sadly I’ve not had a chance to play hardly any this year (something that I will be rectifying for 2010 so if you’re interested, do email me on damh@paganmusic.co.uk and I’ll send you details), however I was invited to visit the Plymouth moot that is held in one of its member’s houses. In advance of the concert the people of the moot held a raffle, and a fund-raising evening and by doing this they were able to only charge £1 for the entry fee. The more I visit Pagans in the Great South West the more impressed I am with the way they work together to get things done, they really are an amazing bunch of people!

So Cerri and I set off for Plymouth at about 10.30am as we had also been asked to lead the group’s Beltane ritual later that afternoon. Now Cerri had just got a second-hand Land Rover Freelander, which we had taken to Glastonbury the weekend before and it was such a pleasant ride we decided to take it again, this time to Plymouth. It had just had the head gasket replaced… Yes, you probably know what’s coming next… Just past Chichester the car overheated, and broke down. This has to be one of the travelling musician’s biggest nightmares! On your way to a gig you break down. In Plymouth people would soon be gathering to hear you play (and hold the ritual) and you just couldn’t get there!! What to do?

Luckily I have the best parents in the entire world, no kidding! I got on the phone to my Dad who drove down to us, he stayed with the broken down Land Rover and waited for the AA, while me and Cerri continued our journey in his car. I’m not joking when I say that it felt like Thunderbird 2 had arrived after calling International Rescue! What a dude he is! So a couple of hours later we began our journey again, and amazingly arrived at the house at 3.30!

The ritual was great, and then in the evening people began to arrive for the concert. And then more people arrived, and more people arrived… In the end there were over 50 people in the lounge (I couldn’t fit them all into the photo)! But it didn’t feel crushed, most were in comfy armchairs, happily supping mead – very civilised. And as for the response, well, I was really taken back by the welcome we received. There was one point when I forgot my words ( it does happen occasionally) and the audience just carried on singing without me. Wonderful stuff! I really do hope that I get invited back again next year.

More Tales from the Road soon!