Halloween, NaNoWriMo and Samhain

 Today would be the 31st October, I'm thinking. For some, that's Halloween. For others, that's Hallowed Eve, or All Souls' Day, or Samhain, or the day before All Saints' Day.

But for me, being an earth-centred witch, it's Beltaine (Beltane, if you prefer). Right now, we are at the point of the swing of the seasons, where Spring passes the climate into the hands of Summer. Birds have mated and are raising their young, plants have flowered (and still are flowering), and their scattered seeds are germinating and growing. It is a time of youth, and the rising of blood or sap, and life.

Samhain/Halloween is later in the cycle. It is the point where the harvest has been gathered in (hence the symbolism of grain and pumpkins (storable supplies of food to get communities through the barren winter). It is a time when the ailing and elderly are starting to be more likely to die as the increasing cold weakens them. It's a time when the spirits of our ancestors are more likely to be around, as once the harvest is over there's less physical work to do, and it's possible to sit back and think. It's also a time of sitting around the family hearth, and listening to the old folks (alive and dead) telling stories, passing on family knowledge, oral history, and just plain horror-stories.

Yep, the Autumn/Winter transition doesn't happen now, here, but around April/May, when we are actually entering into the colder months and the shorter, darker days.  And In this time when I can't keep up with all the weeds enjoying the energy of Beltaine and springing up in my vegetable patches, and with the commercial centres reminding me of Sanhain by decorating with plastic pumpkins and plastic skeletons, I'm finding that I'm missing that darker energy.

I'm of a mind to talk to my dead friends all year round, and many of them answer, or even initiate the conversations. But to have a few days put aside to do only this, is quite special. When I stop writing this, I will stuff a few baggies with sugar - treats. And a few tricks, in the form of plastic cockroaches and blowflies. This, just in case kids come begging. Who knows, they might - I have a skeleton sitting out the front of my house all year round. The postie and the neighbours are quite used to it - nobody turns a hair. I have a few real animal bones scattered around the interior of my house, as well as a few stereotypical Crone-like witches - I might give them a night outside, as well. 

I really should get around to introducing myself to the local primary schools, and offering to do a talk on Halloween and witches once a year in mid/late October. 

All Souls' Day is followed by All Saints' Day, the first of November. Get a Catholic to tell you about that one. For me, this has significance in that it is the first day of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, a misnomer as it's actually international). For over a decade I've been watching my friends participate, but I always identified as a writer of shorter articles and short stories, rather than a novelist.

Less than a week ago, I wrapped up a novel. In the later stages of writing, two more longform ideas occurred to me, ideas that cannot possibly be written in short forms. Plus, of course, the memoire that various people have been egging me on to write, about my time as a night manager in a coastal hotel.

The memoire can wait. It is still too recent, and I still feel a bit scarred by it. I'll see how I feel in another decade. So that left me to choose something to write for NaNoWriMo, out of Idea A, and Idea B. Idea B was a framing story, set solidly in the present and in the outback, in a society with a huge dependence on WiFi for basic functionality. How a diverse group of people break down in the absence of both urban infrastructure and WiFi interests me. That is the framing story: the inner narrative will be a series of monologues that each of these stranded people tell each other for entertainment during two long nights where they don't even have electricity.

That was Idea B. Somewhere in my subconscious I chose it over Idea A in the last day or two, and I'm getting ready to write, starting tomorrow, on the first. It tickles me to think that at a time of year when the other half of the world is celebrating Samhain, a time of sitting around and telling stories and passing on wisdom and spooky tales, I will be writing a book about a group of most reluctant storytellers, sitting around telling stories because they have absolutely nothing else to do.

And now, I should go and fill a few lollybags. With more than lollies. Muahahaha!

Bite that, Fyodor!

 

It is Farmers' Market Saturday today. The farmers' market happens on the first and third Saturday of the month. I like farmers' markets, even though my backyard has been throwing me a lot of vegetables recently. There are other interesting things that my garden doesn't give me: local honey, salamis, baked goods, and other odds and ends. 

There is a woman there who keeps goats, and uses their milk to make lotions, soaps, shower gel and the like. Once, months ago, I bought her handwash (identical to her shower gel) on a trial basis, and immediately fell in love. The problem was, I had just restocked everything with supermarket brands. It took me a fair while to use them - I wasn't about to waste them. Then I went back with an empty two-litre bottle, and asked her to work me out a bulk price and fill it for me, which she did. Now, I refill my conventional supermarket containers with her handmade product. 

The problem with Farmers' Market Saturdays - and any Saturday - is that they follow Friday nights, when I am likely to be out singing. As, in fact, I was last night, and I was having an off night. I didn't cover myself with glory. Still, I didn't have the decency, either, to shut up and go home early, so this morning I woke up muzzy with exhaustion. As, in fact, happens on many a Saturday.

I looked at the alarm and thought: "I'm not going to go to the market," turned it off, and slept for another hour. Then I finally got up, rehydrated, and staggered off to the shower to use my lovely locally-made shower gel. Dressed. Went outside for a bit. Came back in. Sat down at the computer for a bit.

Then my phone made a noise of the "pay me attention" variety, so I had a look. Oh yes, that's right, soon I would have to be down at the library, where the flooded river was no longer licking the bottom course of bricks, for a book release. I didn't remember the details and I hadn't recorded anything, but I assumed it must have been at least slightly interesting because otherwise I wouldn't have booked myself in. So I turned up in good time.

The  book was An Uncommon Hangman, by Rachel Franks. Its subtitle was just beautiful: "The Life and Deaths of ..." I liked that. I liked it a lot. A small group of other people who also somehow survived Friday night came along. Rachel stood up, and did her talk. I decided I liked it a bit more. It piqued me that while I was writing fictitious crime, she had written factual punishment. There was a nice circularity about my being there - I simply had to buy the book, now, and add to my pile of stuff-to-be-read. Bite that, Fyodor Dostoyevski! 

Turns out that even though he was based in Sydney, he was regularly exported to regional areas to do their dirty work for them, and Dubbo had the largest number of his regional clients, so it was fitting she was presenting to us. He must have been a terrifying sight for them: not only was his the last face they would ever see which would make even an unremarkable face scary, but he wore no mask and had no nose!

He seems to have done all the work he possibly could, saved his money, invested in property, and left all of his numerous children comfortably off when he died. It does seem as though he was a devoted family man. You don't need to have good looks or even a nose, to have a heart. Gogol knew that!

After the talk I took my new acquisition away, and despite the fact that I really have no time for reading right now, and I'm halfway through reading something else anyway, I knocked over a couple of chapters to whet my appetite and make me want to come back to it when I do have time and I've finished what I'm already reading.

Rachel Franks' style is clear, conversational and appealing. Even in the text itself, she's candid about the conflicts and contradictions that came up during her research. So far, when that has happened, she's offered both stories, and made a value-judgement about which is more likely.

This is not a review. I've only taken the first bite out of what looks and smells like a mouth-watering meal. I'm keen to eat the rest of it at a more opportune moment.

I don't do fandom or hero-worship ...

 Not quite as old as Steve Kilbey, I am, nevertheless, old. When I was in my twenties I did a lot of long-distance driving, with the radio, cassette or later CD on full blast as I hewed my way through spacetime. I soaked up Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Joan Armatrading, Ross Wilson, Leonard Cohen, and, yes, Steve Kilbey. I wasn't much of a gig-goer back then: in that era, I only made the effort to see Joe Jackson and Elvis Costello (There is only one king, and his name is Elvis. Elvis Costello) and a few long-defunct local bands: people like Unit 17 and the Gibbering Monkeys. My introduction to then-new music was mostly through the radio.

In my dotage I'm behaving more the way I should have back then, and I'm going to gigs more. Of course, Covid put the brakes on that. I'm also involved with the local writers' group, the Outback Writers' Centre., who have regular meetings in a nearby cultural centre.

I was on my way to one of those meetings last weekend, when a notice on the notice-board that I usually walk past at speed caught my eye. Steve Kilbey plays all The Church Singles in a night of music and conversation. I backed up, read it carefully, photographed it, then went to my meeting. Later, I got myself a ticket.

I've watched a few interviews over the years. Now, I know that when I've had enough of working (dreadful work or pet projects), I will do what most people do: I will turn on the TV and slump in my favourite chair. What do you think a creative musician like Steve does when he stops working? Slumps in a chair in front of a flickering screen? That's right, he gets out the brushes and does paintings. More work, more creativity.

I've been very active in the international Tarot community over a great many years, and in a treasure-trove of a forum that used to exist I heard that Steve Kilbey had put together a Tarot deck, out of reproductions of many of his artworks. I was never not going to get that, so I emailed the person in charge of marketing, and asked how I would go about buying a deck.

The story was this, back then. Currently the decks had been printed, but they were boxed up. The band were in Australia, getting ready for a tour of America, and the decks would only be sold through the merch table at their gigs. I said I'd be more than happy to pay for it to be mailed to me before they left. Nope. They'd mail me one, but only after the tour had started, and Americans had had first crack at buying it! Imagine that: an Australian deck-creator, still in Australia, with his decks still in Australia also, and his henchman refuses to make an early sale to another Australian, only a few hundred kilometres down the road! 

To say I was bemused would be ... tactful. Still, I was given no other option.

I waited months. The tour finally happened. I eventually made a payment. An Australian deck was mailed to me ... from America.

And I loved it.

So when I got myself a ticket to last night's gig, I was always going to take the deck and see if he would sign it for me. Also, I was going to scan the merch table and see if they still had the deck in production - if so, I had evil schemes to buy as many decks as my little arms could carry, then later sell or trade most of them off in the hard-core Tarot community.

Because it is SUCH a potent deck. And with a limited print-run, it's automatically sought-after.

It took me a day to locate my copy, because it was lurking in the back of my collection, trying to be invisible. And it nearly got away with it, too! The box is a deep cobalt-blue, the backs also - no visible surface to sign, there. And I'd long rid myself of the title card, if there ever was one in the first place, so nothing to sign there. I'd have to get him to sign the face of a card.

So I sat down with the deck, thumbing though the well-known and well-loved images, deciding which one I could sacrifice to his signature. Muxing? Lost? I decided on Truce. It's a fairly odd watercolour: fence, windows, heterochromatic eyes. The Sun was another choice and perhaps would have been a better background colour for black felt pen, but he would have had to sign over one of his better self-portraits: a distrustful expression on a slightly older face than many of 'em. I wasn't about to let that happen.

I had the deck with me when I turned up and showed my ticket, then straight to the merch table, where a lovely, friendly young woman chatted to me for quite a while. I was disappointed that there were not decks for sale - I bought a book instead, "Something Quite Peculiar". I have a pile of to-be-read books waiting for me, and I'm looking forward to all of them, but I'm looking forward to this one, too.

We talked about the Tarot deck, too, which apparently is out of print, and I said I wanted it signed. At the end of a very enjoyable night the same girl strongly suggested that I should just force myself backstage and crash his unwinding-time. Others had done it, he wouldn't mind. I very much doubted that, but I did it anyway.

He looked at the box: Tarot of the Time Being, a gorgeous play on words that I have always loved. He said it didn't exist any more. I said here it was, blatantly existing right in front of his eyes. And not just existing, but loved. We talked a bit, he signed the card for me, I told him what my favourite Church song was (not a single, so not on the programme), and he was pleased - nobody mentions that one, and he seemed proud of the writing and ideas in the song. It exists on YouTube: look up The Day They Turned Off the Great Machine, from the album the Hologram of Baal. It's worth a very serious listen.

Before I left, he offered to pull a card for me. He pulled the Ace of Spirits. He thought it was predictive, and it was about what a wonderful day I'd have today. I thought it was expressive, and was about what a wonderful night I had last night. At the bottom of this post you can see it plus the card he signed. Below them are the three cards I pulled about his reaction to our contact. "Lover and "Imitation" seem to me to say that he saw me as an adoring fan. The Sun, with that strong expression leavened with a slightly ironic smile, implies that he didn't hate the contact between us.

The night had had a very early start, so we were done and dusted by ten. Friday is Karaoke Night, which ends at midnight. So I raced off down there, and sang "Unguarded Moment" entirely differently to the way he sings it, as a tribute.

But before I left the gig ... during the performance he had borrowed a capo from the venue as he'd left his own somewhere. They lent him one. I saw it being returned at the end of the night, so I sidled up to the staff, and offered to buy it. I am now the proud owner of a capo that has only ever been used by Steve Kilbey not on his famous bass but on a twelve-string. Used during a gig on the 7th October, 2022 in Dubbo. Such is its provenance.

I fell into bed at the end of the night, a very happy old woman.