When I first read something of Martin Shaw’s work, my body rumbled. I won't mention which book, but it wasn’t the only time I experienced a deep inner rumble while listening to the voice of an OTHER. Another time was while I listened to a conversation between Tyson Yunkaporta and his wife Megan Kelleher on the Future Thinkers podcast - Indigenous Thinking in Times of Transition. The deep convulsing of my unconscious self responded to these voices as if they were speaking with my own unheard voice. A version of myself that had absolutely had enough of not being heard, not being seen, not being acknowledged, was a potential in me that was not willing to stand another moment of being ignored. You see, I was under the spell gifted to me at birth (insert sad emoji face), by traumatic early childhood domestic violence, a dissolution of my barely established ego, that alluded I was not real, that what I felt and experienced was not relevant to the mainstream conversation that was happening in my home and elsewhere. And this REAL me, was not having another second of life under a rock. Not once it heard itself speaking in the voices of these two men and a woman.
My experience of Martin Shaw live and in person, at the confluence of fires of Beltane & Walpurgis was life affirming. YES, I was real. His voice was truly my forgotten sacred OTHER. The one hidden for decades under the accumulated dust of dying stars. The unconscious me that had rumbled loudly and thrown me out of my sad illusion of a disgruntled and deep contraindication of life on THIS earth, was also an animated growler of the angelic kind. One of the Sidhe, was HE. This new earth contained the old earth too. And it was as REAL as the one I was standing on. I even have a picture now to prove it (thank you SOM for posting it)… complete with bonfire between me and this enchanted OTHER, in the same local space (BTW, that is me in the bottom right of the image, in the wicker chair, in the front row under a blanket). Phew. I am so glad I have all the proof I need now. Thank you Old World Sir, for being so ROMANTIC in your storytelling, while being simultaneously GRUMPY about it, like an enchanted dwarf speaking riddles into my soft underbelly.
On the drive home from this affair I swore out loud You Bastard you awoke me from my slumber and now I want to change. FUCK GOD DAMN it you prick! Where were you when I was 7 and needed you? Where were you when I was 14 and tried to give myself away to any taker while I was still young and fresh and unplucked?
Oh, right, I had you buried safely under a rock and was quickly learning how to KNOT listen to you. The HOW was fast becoming a lie I would tangle myself in for years to come. So NOW you show up in stark clarity, the SUN to mirror my forsaken MOON and you politely decline my GIFTS of sacred mead (as was right for you to do)… STILL. I am so bloody wounded and OPENLY grateful to you for having finally come to my shore to grace me with your incredible GIFTS.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, said three times to honour YOU and the memory of HOW to be held by a resurfacing TRUST, an emerging and unfurling trust in the sanctity of LIFE. Thank you dear Martin for all that you stand for, for HOW you’ve stood for it, both privately and publicly, and most of all, with the GRACE in which you’ve stood steadfastly with it throughout your life, and for remembering what I could not. The TRURO show (the 2nd Truro to you!) was and will always be a truly beautiful treasure.
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