Page 26, September 2001, Germany
Interviewer: Elmar Klemm for www.zillo.de
It’s remarkable, that your songs include lots of themes of the European mythology. Why don’t you write about the roots of your continent? About the Aborigines, Asian mythology?
A Sufi I admire, Idries Shah, and anthropologist Joseph Campbell, showed that our mythic roots are connected. But are (we) compelled merely by geography? If an Aboriginal man settled in Germany, would his children never sing of the Rainbow Serpent?… Are we banned from (our) heritage because we crossed the equator to South-East Asia, a mere generation ago? (vs 50,000 years!) Some tribes do not permit their stories to be told by us… Yet my music expresses nature as alive with spirits; in this, the Aboriginal Dreamtime and my Welsh animistic roots are entwined.
Discovered i right the yggdrasil-sign on the cd? i wondered a bit, because i couldn’t find any pagan myths in your songs. What does it mean for you?
Yes the tree is Yggdrasill the World Ash… ‘The Seagiant’: sleeping lover as ancient seagod Poseidon. ‘Salamander’: creature who lives in fire, appearing in an alchemist’s furnace. ‘Alice in the Garden of Live Flowers’: Persephone / Inanna. ‘Sentinel’: a will-o’-the-wisp tempts a traveller. What does the tree mean? Wisdom? The Storyteller’s Rod? Fertility? Meeting of Wells? Or a home of birds and shelter for travellers? As you wish …
How do you use the power of mythology in your daily life?
I transplanted ancestral myths… into my sensual environment. Colours, textures… trees, taste, scent of eucalyptus, are pure enchantment… When life is hard, I have called upon gods or poets… The mythology I am living, swirls in perpetual alchemy.
Are you aware of the fame of elven-music in Germany? Some of your songs remember me to Germany’s famous Mila Mar.
I remember a haunting German song of an Elf-King who stole a child. Now I’ll search for Mila Mar, thank you. Would you agree that elves are faeriepeople? I read that they are linked with the Muses, as patrons of the arts; and with the Spinners or Fates. Do you know The King of Elfland’s Daughter, by Dunsany? Have you heard Caprice’s Elvenmusic on Prikosnovenie?