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Wassail!December 17, 2006 Loreena McKennitt's newest CD, An Ancient Muse, is playing on the boombox. Haunting, ethereal, plaintive, searching . . . Three candles are burning on my desk. No other light in the room: you'll go blind trying to read in that light, some adult from long ago is muttering in my ear. Not quite no other light: Morgana V's monitor glows with the subtle colors of my website, dusky blues, purples, greens, grays. Ursula Le Guin once suggested that for many people the glow of a TV screen approximated that of the ancient campfire, the small island of light around which the clan huddled for warmth. Morgana is a campfire, the Morrigan's cauldron, one of Morgaine's gates to another world. Light and music are the heart of the holiday season. Rekindle the sun; rekindle the heart. I rode through the woods after sundown but just before full dark, singing a couple of the songs we sang at the Hebrew Center last night, like "Woyaya":
The singing was great fun, harmonious, exuberant. On Friday the Vineyard Gazette ran a preview story about it. The writer, Lauren Martin, understood what this rather casual chorus and this rather casual concert were for. She quoted Roberta Kirn, our intrepid leader: "Music in other cultures is really a functional part of the community. It's like walking or breathing or talking. We kind of lost that." Friday night was Mary-Jean's annual Nog and Song party. As usual many of the attendees were singers, and as usual we spent a lot of time around the piano. The eggnog was its usual potent self. Here and there we manage to rekindle the music. The dark of the year is an especially fertile time for it. We come out of hibernation, see each other's faces, hear each other's voices, hear the harmony and melody in our own voices. Last year, it seemed, I gave everybody candles. This year it's music. As with the candles, I order one for you, one for you, one for me . . . I've been chortling along with the Capitol Steps: "Here We Come a-Waffling" and "Why's the Army Frisking Santa Claus?" and "Do You Fear What I Fear?" Loreena's Ancient Muse came from Ladyslipper Music, the gloriously long-lived distributor of women's music based in Durham, North Carolina. Handwritten on the mailing label was "Hi Susanna!" Long time ago, in my bookselling days, I knew several of the Ladyslipper women; Laurie Fuchs is still there. I bet she wrote it. Yesterday I got roped into the beginning of another project, this one science-fiction-related. I'm feeling less on the wrong side of a locked gate than I did last week.
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