UPDATE! We raised $120 for Haiti – massive thanks to everyone who helped me by purchasing this recording – I will continue to donate 100% of the profits from any continuing sale to Partners In Health…so you can hear me sing and contribute to an excellent cause at the same time. Thank you!
So here it is!
Me, singing.
As part of The Help Haiti Blog Challenge, I’m offering this recording of my singing to raise as much money as I can for Haiti.
The recording is of the Hermit Songs, written by American composer Samuel Barber in 1953. It is a group of 10 songs in English, composed to a collection of anonymous poems written by Irish monks and scholars from the 8th to the 13th centuries, in translations by W. H. Auden, Chester Kallman, Howard Mumford Jones, Kenneth Jackson and Sean O’Faolain.
These songs are beautiful, quirky, moving and heartfelt in their simplicity.
There is even a song giving heavenly thanks to beer. Which means it must be good, right?
This song cycle was recorded way back in 1996 and it is strictly bootleg hush-hush (even though I’m here plugging it to the whole world on the web.) As most of my life is still packed away in cardboard boxes from the move back to Australia from the UK, it was the only recording I could get my hands on fast. It was professionally recorded for broadcast, but because it is bootlegalicious I can not really say any more about it.
Except that I really hope that you’ll love these songs as much as I loved singing them.
When you click the button below, you will be treated to a download of the aforementioned musical loveliness for the bargain donation of $10. This will go to Partners in Health in Haiti to assist in bringing urgently needed medical relief to this shattered country.
So go click! And thank you.
Natalie Christie – Hermit Songs Op. 29 By Samuel Barber
- “At St Patrick’s Purgatory” (translated by Seán Ó Faoláin)
- “Church Bell at Night” (translated by Howard Mumford Jones)
- “St Ita’s Vision” (translated by Chester Kallman)
- “The Heavenly Banquet” (translated by Seán Ó Faoláin)
- “The Crucifixion” (translated by Howard Mumford Jones)
- “Sea Snatch” (translated by Kenneth Jackson)
- “Promiscuity” (translated by Kenneth Jackson)
- “The Monk and his Cat” (translated by W.H. Auden)
- “The Praises of God” (translated by W.H. Auden)
- “The Desire for Hermitage” (translated by Seán Ó Faoláin)
I’m a great believer in not watching the news.
Especially since I became a parent. There is a British comedian called Al Murray (aka ‘The Pub Landlord‘) who observes that the minute you have children you suddenly find yourself more right wing. (In context this is really funny – sadly you won’t get the joke here.) The often grotesque and explicit images fed to us via the media – particularly those involving children -literally make me physically sick. I feel that twisting, clawing, eating up inside that comes from observing people in distress…and I don’t like that feeling.
BUT if there is a cry for help, I do not turn away and do nothing.
I have written recently about the idea of contrast and we can use how negative events in our lives as a defining mechanism – as a way for us to observe the devastation and to launch within ourselves the desire for something better.
So when a disaster of the magnitude of the Haiti earthquake takes place, it is for us to take it in. And then to focus intensely on making the situation better.
While the mainstream media glory in the death toll, the footage of bodies piled into tractors and the failures of the emergency systems to fully cope, it is up to us to do whatever it is we can, however small, to construct a different future.
When Kelly Diels launched The Help Haiti Blog challenge (inspired by Danielle La Porte) I was immediately in.
Regular readers will know I am already throwing everything I can at the scarce snippets of time that I have at my fingertips.
But hell, why not start spinning another plate? continue reading…
Well, all I can say is finalmente.
It’s been almost three weeks since the birth of my little boy. Almost 21 days of soothing and rocking and holding and snuggling and swaddling, clutching at spare minutes of sleep and crisis-managing the occasional nappy FAIL.
But I am very pleased to confirm that he is truly scrumptious.
There is nothing more delicious than a newborn baby. There is a certain freshly-baked scent that barely lasts a day or two, but in those first hypnotic days it fills the room like a siren song. I’m sure it’s all part of the charm offensive…
I’m hooked. But I can now, with cast iron certainty, declare…never again.
Three kids?? Why, oh why did I start my blog three months before giving birth to baby three? What was I thinking? Why didn’t someone shake the hell out of me, slap my cheek in a kind of 30s movie style kinda way and say “For God’s sake woman, get a hold of yourself!”
Surely I was trying to do too much?
The truth is, you see, I have never been one to take it easy. If I start spinning a plate, I tend to say “What the hell, let’s spin twelve.” My imagination has always struggled to slow down and wait patiently for my circumstances to catch up, red-faced and puffing and apologising for the mess.
But despite the exhaustion and the guilt and the spinning spinning spinning, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Because there is only NOW. continue reading…
Have you ever stopped to notice how often you complain about something?
Think back over the past 24 hours and try to remember the conversations you had, not just with other people, but with yourself.
What did you spend your time focusing on? The good stuff? Or the stuff that really made you mad, annoyed, sick, upset, depressed or pissed off?
We tend to get a lot of mileage out of being miserable. Why is this? Is it somehow more beautifully tragic? More attainable? A tasty way to get more attention? Or do we place so little trust in our own ability to deal with our negative experiences that we have to seek out the solutions (and sympathy) from other people?
Or maybe it’s just that we’ve learned, over time, that no-one wants to hear how great we’re doing. That would be bragging. Cocky. Just weird.
We can get the same effect by storing up all the crappy stuff in our head instead, like a proud and wounded ninja unwilling to burden those around us with our noble inner turmoil. But the effect is still the same, whether you share it with the world or keep it to an internal monologue.
It’s called focusing on the stuff we hate. And it only breeds more of said stuff to hate. Which makes you talk about it more, think about it, broadcast it to others, label it in neon lights as “true”…before you know it, there goes another funky little failure mantra over and over in your head like a bad song on a loop. continue reading…
I love the work that Amanda and Jenn are doing at Kind Over Matter, a site dedicated to “Kind Acts, Inspirational Art & Kind Projects”. They produce a huge wealth of free craft ideas and beautifully designed printable cards, like the “Create Positive Change” picture, or this “Love Your Inner Wild Woman” poster -
But my favourite is definitely these beautiful handmade Fortune Cookies that you can print out and make yourself – complete with tiny fortunes (you could even fill them with your own messages.)
I only wish I had more rainy days here in Brisbane that would allow me to curl up and get crafty with my girls. Sadly I fear the youngest would only want to stick her fingers in the glue…*eternally cleaning up sigh*.
You can also admire their wonderful photography by joining their group on Flickr or follow them on Twitter @kindovermatter. Enjoy!
Tiny me as Susanna in "The Marriage of Figaro"
Chris Brogan posted the fifth video in his Overnight Success series yesterday, and it really got me thinking about the idea of belief systems and how people get sucked in to the story of their own hyped-up greatness.
You see, coming from the opera biz, I know a lot of people who appear to be huge believers in their own awesome press.
(I remember hosting a dinner party where one up-and-coming baritone spent the entire evening flicking through all my opera mags and reading aloud all the great reviews of his performances . The rest of us just rolled our eyes and kept drinking.)
And of course, opera has this great stereotype of the “prima donna” who symbolises this very idea – strutting and pouting her way across the stage demanding the world love her the way she deserves to be loved, and having a catty tantrum when the world fails to deliver the adoration she expects.
But there is something I have always noticed about people who feel the need to loudly broadcast their apparent greatness to the world. It’s not that they believe the hype…it’s that they don’t believe the hype. continue reading…
Have you ever had the kind of day where everything just fell into place? Where you felt great, nothing seemed to phase you and everyone around you was on your side? The day flies by, stuff just gets done, and before you know it you’re falling into bed with a smile on your face, a little amazed at how easy it all was?
Or is it more like a struggle? Squeezing yourself into a space on the train that turns up late, resisting every call you have to make, staring at a blank computer screen or shouting at your kids? Another week of feeling too tired, too stressed, depressed and anxious.
Which “you” sounds more like you? continue reading…
“It is one of the beautiful compensations of this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.” ~ Charles Dudley Warner
The World Is Full Of Scary People Out To Get You…Right?
Some would have you believe that we live in a world where the approach of a stranger signals danger. In this version, the universe is a place full of fear and suspicion.
It’s a grim, dark kind of world, where there are few opportunites for “random acts of kindness” to flourish without anticipating some creeping, hidden motive. Automatically, we expect the worst of people. We anticipate the “going wrong” of things.
But I just don’t buy it. Especially when I’ve had a day like today.
Because today I caught the universe “red handed”. I’m going to share with you an experience that illustrates perfectly how I believe the universe secretly works. Where sushi, spilt coffee and groceries all come together to shout out how magical the world can be, and how random acts of kindness may not be so random after all.
Shall I begin? continue reading…
