Song of the Desert

This is a video posted on Daily Motion and You Tube as a sampler of all it takes to relax and enter a wider inner space than we might be used. Images of the desert often spark a feeling of grandeur, mystery and the ultimate metaphysical sensation that there is infinite space right here on earth.

All you have to do is make sure you have uninterrupted time - no mobile phones- just some headphones so you can go right into the experience and just watch how amazing it feels to enter a light trance and engage once again with your inner resources. Just doing this for a few minutes each time you need to can allow you a better right left brain hemisphere relationship and just bring you into contact with your deeper self.

So, please listen and enjoy.

Brand Literary Magazine Issue 04 Winter/Spring 09

The best things come in small, neat, well designed packages they say. All the better for slowly unwrapping. So this is how the latest Brand Literary Magazine Issue 4 appears. Nice to touch, with smooth glossy pages, very easy on the eyes, and full of edgy, provoking lines of poetry, short fiction and art work. It is the magazine of the Creative Writing Department at Greenwich. It contains my story String of Bright Moments which you can read a sample of here. The public launch and reading will be at Rix Mix, May 3rd.

Editor, Nina Rapi goes to the core of feelings in the introduction, talking of the battle that breaks out between erotic and higher forms of love, an overriding theme. Jeffar Khaldi's work appears in it. This artist, from Lebanon, also appeared at the Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East at the Saatchi Gallery, reported below.

Two copies have just arrived for me to look at, so will leaf through them at leisure and report back on the contents: thus far, thus good, I'm smelling a winner, it's a tasty literary morsel.

The Sound of Music Heals

Funny how you come across things just when you most need them. By chance. Happy chance. I have been raving about the elegaic and arcadian sound of the Fleet Foxes lately and even went to see them at the Roundhouse last week. They have a sublime sound. This got me talking to a friend who said 'Have you heard of Mari Boine?' I said I hadn't. She said 'Oh, you must listen'. She brought me the CDs Gula Gula and Idjagiedas. This music touches deep somehow if you are able to listen deeply and let it in. It harps back to ancient rhythms, and irregular resonances, with unusual instrumentation, blending jazz, folk, world, but mostly being Shamanistic. Mari Boine is of the Sami people that live across the Scandinavian countries, into Russia and even Siberia. She has a haunting, soulful voice. It seems to say 'don't forget nature', 'don't forget where you came from'. So the sound of music can come back to reconnect us. I imagine it's not for everyone, not really, but if it happens into your life at a crucial point in goes right to the solar plexus. If you are feeling down or fractured, broken up about something and this can happen more frequently than we care to admit, being handed Mari Boine could do worse than help you to soothe over any sore spots in your life. Listen hard, and learn.

Painters from the Middle East

Just some images from the New Painting from the Middle East exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery, London. It's a very impressive collection with some thought-provoking works, mainly from Iranian, Iraqi, Lebanese,Palestinian and Egyptian artists. It's very good to see that ideas are challenging and deal directly with controversial issues that are every day experiences: bomb attacks, hospitals, the veil, gender roles. There's a mix of media too with sculpture, painting and photography. Definitely worth a visit. The Saatchi is a well proportioned, spacious gallery, a perfect space in the heart of Chelsea.

New Hypnosis Website

This website www. kierondevlin.com is dedicated to helping people overcome all the problems, low self esteem, low energy anxiety, depression, insomnia, chronic illnesses, fatigue and many others to seek ways of getting out of the mental box we often tie ourselves up in. Hypnosis helps unravel the knots, so we can free ourselves more easily.

It has a lot of information and links to how to book hypnosis sessions, and reserve places on the fantastic three day life changing seminar The Phil Parker Lighting Process.

It is also a great resource not just about hypnosis, NLP, EFT and the Lightning Process but with tips and articles on :
1) Self Hypnosis
2) Goals exercises
3) Writing as Healing: A pen is mightier than a pill.
4) Using EFT with Lucid Dreaming ( to come).

And you can expect much more to come in the next weeks with more news of the Proteus Project workshops and writing experiments. I hope you enjoy reading and would love to see lots of people get the benefit of all that I have learned.

Have a browse through and see if it matches what you are looking for, or if anything rings true.Contact me for more information.

Life is a Life Poster:Part 2

Visualization is the key to operating the deeper aspects of the mind. If you can't visualize something happening then, it is still not clear in your head and it is better to wait for clarity to come before moving ahead. Once it is clear, it will begin its work to materialise. To help shape your world, and even make things happen that you never thought would happen, it is a great idea to do a Tony Buzan-style mind map, collage, image tree, spider-gram, or anything that visually represents what you hope to achieve. Often using scissors paste, magazine cuttings, crayons, pencils, pens is a great way, but for visual people just the image is enough.

I previously suggested the Life Poster as a way of building self esteem, getting in touch with your self image, and building that into the shape that you would like it to be, but it is also just good fun and therapeutic to play around with images, to observe their interplay of colour, forms, and meaning.

The Life Poster is meant to represent your ideal self. With image programmes nowadays it is getting easier all the time to create fessional results. In the previous post, I talked about how to do it on Photoshop, but even I don't have the time to spend using it. A much easier way is to use Picasa which is free to download from Google.

Just follow these easy steps to make your own Life Poster Collage:

1. Download Picasa from Google, if you don't already have it on your PC.
2. Collect jpeg pictures of yourself or of people or objects you admire or wish to have in your life.
   
3. Select for colour, interest, contrast, similarity.
4. Create a folder and give it a special name, something that resonates with what you want.
5. Open Picasa and add the folder
6. Select the folder and 'hold items'
7. Click 'Create Collage' from the options at the bottom of Picasa
8. Use the settings to arrange it in Grid, Mosaic, or Scattered Photo arrangment.
9. Click to finalise the Collage
10. Wait for Picasa to complete the collage for you.
11. Send it or print it out, or use it as a backdrop or wallpaper wherever you need reminding of what you most want to have in your life.
12. Enjoy contemplating these wonderful multiple images.
13. Observe the effects in your life.
14. Try it on other things and see what happens.
    

DoorKnobs and Bodypaint: Fantastic Flash Fiction- an anthology

I have just received the book 'Doorknobs and Bodypaint : Fantastic Flash Fiction - an Anthology' - and very nice it is too. This anthology, put together by Leila Rae, is a treasure trove of writing inspired by its own brevity. Some works read like tasty morsels from intriguing longer novels that you might want to delve right into, others works read like stark headlight poems, leaving you startled with an indelible image or a thoughtful afterglow.

I am glad I found time this past year to help edit these stories. This meant combing in detail through hundreds of stories on the website to find the ones that stood out. It is good to see all the other stories now in the finished product, a labour of love. All the stories are of high quality which goes to show that being brief is a virtue in and of itself. It also includes one of my stories, 'The Thousand and One Tales and a Tale and a Half', the winner of the Hayward Fault Line competition, 2000. I'm sorry I missed the public launch with readings in New York back in October. Well done though, and all those contributing should be proud to be in such a slender and lovely book to add to your library. For more info about how to contribute to the online magazine, Doorknobs and Bodypaint has the latest submission instructions.