CZARINA - EMPIRE

 

There are those who make art, and those who make music, and then there are those, like Czarina, who build worlds. Starting from her voice and working outwards, her performance builds upon the raw elements of her powerful imagination to give us more than sounds and lights and movements. More than the sum of her parts. Somehow it makes perfect sense to blend medieval and futuristic aesthetics, to don chainmail and sing songs about magical ceremonies while playing an electric guitar laid over waves of orchestral synth melodies. Czarina occupies a complete world of imagined traditions that are both dreamed up from the depths of history, and drawn back from a potential future where technology and magic are somehow the same thing.

Putting it like that, she seems to embody the present moment perfectly. She is a statement, a declaration, an aesthetic manifesto placing beauty and mystery together on a throne built of techno-mythology to challenge the armies of dystopian cyber-punks who view the present and the future as tragedy. Czarina sings with hope in her voice, with anger and fire and a tangled poetry that grants one the feeling of having encountered a great spirit. Like a dream, the message is not always clear upon waking, but the songs draw one back again and again. For weeks now, I have awoken with her music in my mind. I listen over and over until the songs become a feeling inside me, a theme upon which my day floats, and in the night, her magic works its way inside me, spinning threads of inspiring melodies that bolster my resolve and strengthen my heart. There is magic in her music, and healing.

Technically speaking, her songs feel built upon structures deeply familiar from folk singing traditions, layering harmonies and melodies upon each other to wrap the listener up in a swirling rainbow of sound. Yet Czarina does not rest upon tradition, but from it she leaps into the sky, her music expressing a deep love of the techno-future and all its potential. Her lyrics attest to the strength of her mind and heart, as the best lyricists do. She has carved in stone the pillars of her belief and recorded these rituals for us.

It is a gift, to be in company with such a magical being. Her spells have been cast upon me and I submit to her, this monarch of imagination.

 

 https://www.czarinaofficial.com/

 

 https://www.youtube.com/@CZARINAOFFICIAL

Review: Ink Pot Arts presents - The Parsifal Project - Waltjapiti, the spark within.

 (Note: unfortunately, I was unable to upload any photos to the blog post, not sure why it wouldn't work.)

Follow the link for photos:  https://www.facebook.com/inkpotarts

(May 2025)

I received an invitation from the director. I know Jo-anne well enough that I would attend anything she put on, regardless of its subject. I also love this theatre (The Living Arts Centre) so much that I would leap at any opportunity to enter that building, even if there were nothing onstage.

I walk in blind, totally ignorant of the play's subject, history, style or themes, and though the opening scenes present a chanting chorus that seems to forewarn of struggle and tragedy, I quiet my expectations and open myself to the drama.

I open myself so that whatever the story wants me to feel, 

I want to feel that.

A murder, a woman in flight with a baby, an escape.

Oh, this is a hero origin story, I think, and find comfort in that assumption.

Silly me.

But I don't want to tell you the story, I'm not equipped for that, I'm still dizzy with the spectacle I have only this night witnessed and I could not string the events together. But I can tell you what I felt.

Being inside that theatre,

that magically sculpted room that makes every sound into music,

being there with those robed women speaking with Godly voices that command the limits and mysteries of the universe,

being inside that sound, inside that timeless rhythmic chanting of the Chorus

I am a child again, I accept the magic of the world inside the dome of the Chorus' song.

And so, with startling alacrity, I let myself be swept into the quest, not asking questions, but rather accepting my part as witness. Bliss. Seated close to the orchestra, I glimpse the musicians faces by lamplight, watch their fingers caress sweet songs from strings and wood, and I am seated inside this music, inside the Chorus, inside the theatre...

A man lies dead, his wife cradles him, weeping. The hero asks my question for me...

What's happening?

and the grieving woman's reply pulls unbidden tears from my eyes.

The world happened, all at once

As if by force, I sit back in my seat and blink through my blurring vision.

I let it happen to me. Her grief. I let the dramatic force of her cries break through, and I think,

oh, this play is much more than a hero tale.

This is a light inside the dark poetry of the world. This is hope inside utter desperate grief. This is a dream inside the music, inside the Chorus, inside the theatre, and we are allowed for these precious hours to exist inside all this with the dreamers and makers of this magnificent interpretation of an ancient classic drama, told and re-told. A ship of Theseus sort of play, re-made for our own age, for our own country. We, the audience, are part of a history now, the story of a story, inside the music, inside the chorus, inside the theatre, inside the world.

This is not just a hero story. We moderns have gotten used to a certain format of hero tales, dominated this century by American legends. Parsifal is a hero who quests not to defeat an Evil, but to discover the Good. His only real nemesis is himself.

----------

(Writing now the morning after the play)

So now, to speak technically for a moment:

I've read a few ancient Greek plays and understand the reason those plays are still in print, still being performed. Those plays are not ancient, they are contemporary with every moment of human history. I feel that way about a lot of ancient literature. Parsifal seems the same. An ancient tale, continually re-told because it feels continually relevant. I mention the Greek plays because of their famous use of the Chorus, the voice of the world who, like us in the audience, are both witnesses and participants in the story.

The use of this ancient dramatic method does something to me: It lets me know that this presentation is not a mirror of reality, it is a dramatic presentation. In order to really participate properly, and by that I mean - to watch the play with the best frame of mind - I have to enter the dramatic mindset, I must suspend my disbelief and silence my critical mind. I have to cease all assumptions, cease predicting the outcome, cease testing the characters by my own ideals. I have to let them tell their story in the way they tell it, and I must receive it as true in that moment.

Myths aren't lies. No-one who reads them is expected to interpret their events in the same way we must read the daily news. Yet neither are myths True, not in the scientific sense. Myths are emotionally true, emotionally real. They describe a world that is both utterly familiar and magically foreign and if we are to best absorb the benefit of their wisdom, we must let them speak to us in their own language. For the stage this is a visual language of costume and choreographed movements, a sonic language of harmonies and dissonances, a transformation of written text into living representation.

The dramatic Chorus, robed, masked, mysterious, chanting in unison, speaking seemingly from the stage and the wings and the darkness of the ceiling above me, surround me with the magic of their word - the Chorus are the gateway into Myth. When they speak, I exist inside their truth, I am held inside the limits of their knowledge and I can relax.

While I am here, inside the theatre, the outside world does not exist. The Chorus gives me permission to allow the myth to be true, to allow the actors' actions and words and movements to be natural expressions of their own reality. This is dramatic reality. I have experienced this continually in dance, and it is what I love about the stage. Taken away from the context of the theatre, those behaviours and movements resemble madness. If a dancer performed her routine in the supermarket, sans music, most people would turn away, aware only of their discomfort at the conventions of civil behaviour being ignored so openly.

But on the stage, accompanied by music, those same movement are the pinnacle of beauteous truth.

Inside the dome of the Chorus' magic spell, the magical characters are real.

This particular play also used another very successful method for helping me to discard my assumptions: assumptions about the play as a whole, as well as what I might presume about the behaviours and actions of the individual characters. Parsifal is a European legend, an Arthurian legend, and those titles carry a whole raft of cultural assumptions. So when the play opened with an Australian Aboriginal dancer with twin boomerangs click-clacking the rhythm of his movement, again I was kicked out of the realm of my assumptions about how a medieval European play can behave. The continued use of this dance and of aboriginal artwork in backdrop motifs maintained this barrier against forming assumptions. So, in the wonderful confusion this juxtaposition created,

I relaxed back into the comfort of assuming nothing, and of letting the mythological reality this production wanted me to believe, to be real.

This was not Parsifal set in a familiar European world. This was a new myth, and to return to my Greek comparisons, a ship of Theseus, built of familiar seeming parts making a familiar shaped craft, but the completed vessel is in truth, a completely new ship in which we the audience are swept away on the tides of history being made in the present.

This present, our present, does not have the ancient borders of medieval Europe; cultural, geographic, ethnic. So when several Indian, and Australian aboriginal actors appeared, knights in armour wielding long swords, Queens in their throne rooms, speaking with unmasked Indian or Australian accents, again I was forced out of my assumptions about the characters they portrayed. This was not a medieval play for a medieval audience. This was a modern play for a modern, Australian audience. I sat very still and allowed the story to be told to me, I allowed it to be true, to be real. I stopped trying to guess what might happen next, I stopped trying to be clever and outwit the story in my mind.

This kind of modernisation and cultural updating succeeds or fails in dramatic re-tellings for reasons perhaps too subtle for me to describe. At its worst it can feel forced, shoe-horning modern references into an ancient frame in way that makes both setting and characterisation feel false. At its best, (and I consider this production of Parsifal to be a beautiful example of this), it delivers a completely honest, sincere, faithful re-imagining of an already imaginary world. The actors in Parsifal were so invested, their performances so powerful, their delivery so believable, emotional, articulate and passionate that I could do nought but stare in awe at their embodiment of archetypes whose familiarity reinforce in me the belief in the universality of human experience.

So that's what I've been digging down to. The universality of this production lifts it out of its medieval native soil, and sets it running free in a new world, for a new audience. Yet, universal as it's themes and narratives are, I'm fully aware of how successfully the script has been adapted for a specifically Australian audience. It spoke to me with a familiar vernacular, but it did so in such a way that I was continually surprised and not for a moment could I rely upon pre-conceived notions to make judgements.

I spent an evening sat inside this magical world and I stepped out of it at the end of the show a changed person. To be in the audience for such a production is to have participated in the long history of the story of Arthur and Parsifal. That history is now a part of my story, I am a part of that history. We are a part of that story. Participants in something much bigger than ourselves, something universal and personal and timeless and magical and real.

Review of Seven Valleys by Alain Valodz.

 

Do you ever see faces in tree bark? Or does a shadow on a wall transform itself into a memory of an old, and long lost friend? Does music do more than entertain you with pleasant airs or catchy grooves? Do you find yourself imagining that the musical notes of a wordless song are actually telling you a story? Can you follow along and let your imagination paint scenes, cast characters in the place of instrument voices? Do you reach the end of the album only to press play again, and again, and again, each time finding a new way to feel...

Feel what? You may ask....Feel yourself, I answer. Does music reveal you to yourself, like a passionate conversation with a friend will reveal your inmost desires and secrets? Are you open to such openness? Do the vibrations of strings cause sympathetic harmonies to resonate inside you? Are you in harmony with your own self to such a degree that you find it possible to feel harmony with all living (and non-living) beings? Can you feel compassion and kinship with a sound, a song, an album?

There is a place, a quest, a destination and a journey - it is called the Seven Valleys, wherein the search for love, knowledge, unity, contentment, wonderment, true poverty and absolute nothingness can all be experienced. Do you see faces in tree bark? Do you hear songs on the wind or distant drums in the rumble of traffic? Do you hear your own soul resonating in harmony with the world as it is? Can music change you? Can it change the world?

If you do not know, I encourage you to find out....

Alain Valodz' album can be listened to, purchased, and downloaded here:

 Alain Valodz - Seven Valleys

 

Review of : I am root. Fringe performance, 2022, Olenka Natalya Toroshenko

People tell stories all the time,

we hardly notice - the story of a day, or a night,

or a holiday, or a job,

but every once in a while, a poet enters the room...

Olenka Natalya Toroshenko, a poet, dancer, singer,

told the story of her ancestors 

and of the diaspora of her people to unlikely shores.

She told the remarkable story of her childhood,

simultaneously Canadian and Ukranian,

complicated and enriched by cultural rituals,

sheltered by, and defined within the boundaries

of her cultural community.

She recited the words, in her mother tongue,

of the Ukranian national hero, a poet,

Educate yourselves, learn from many nations

Shedding tears, contorted by joy and grief, she performed her story,

and it felt sometimes as if this were a rite of passage,

that storytelling from the deep well of one's own history, 

culture and traditions,

is an initiation into the mother-lode of feelings, 

memories and symbols

that are the gifts and responsibilities

of that culture.

And, for me,

to witness this narrative of overlapping waves of meaning,

delivery, style, humour, shadow and light,

was also an initiation,

albeit filtered through all my own cultural assumptions, 

memories, symbols and songs,

I entered the cave, I heard the story, I came away changed

and now,

I tell you, in my own small way

of how I was moved

by her movement, by her words, by the conviction in her eyes,

moved to reflect on my own history, culture and upbringing.

People tell stories all the time,

but every once in a while,

a poet enters the room.

**

Post Script

The Ukranian National Hero is Taras Shevchenko and the poem is (in English) called 'My Friendly Epistle". The translation goes like this:

Educate yourselves, my brethren,

Study well, think deep!

Learn from many other nations,

And your wisdom keep!

Who forsakes his own Mother,

Finds no welcome home;

God-forsaken, among strangers

He will always roam.

His own children act like strangers,

Strangely they speak too

Thus forsaken, he will wander

His mistakes to rue!

To buy tickets to her show, follow the link.

But hurry up, she's only performing this week. (Mar 2nd - Mar 6th)

https://adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/i-am-root-af2022

 

Review of Sanacori

Some albums come into your life at just the right moment. This moment has been a long time coming, and, sitting alone as I so often do now, with crowded parties and noisy restaurants a rare and nervous experience, this music came to me...a world unto itself, both foreign and familiar.

There's something about 'folk' music that speaks to me, whether it's Irish acoustic folk-punk, Croatian post-apocalyptic-folk-sludge-metal, or this album of traditional Italian folk. Starting at the very first song, La Zamarra (The spider), I close my eyes and imagine the feasting hall, the band roaring from the raised corner stage, the singer now crooning, now crying, and the words, as yet untranslated by my ear, speak with perfect clarity to my heart, to my feet, my hips and hands.

I hardly need to understand this music with my mind. It speaks to my ancestors, whether or not they were Italian, Spanish, German or Armenian (and my ancestors were in fact from all those places...). These are love songs, bawdy and bold, sweet and sentimental, real and raw. The sweet melody of a thin whistle, or the cheerful skipping keys notes of the accordion, the comfort of a guitar chord strummed with percussive precision, pulsing and pushing, pulling and playing with my ear, casting me into an imaginary world of laughing smiling people, feasting, dancing, singing and playing in a universe unattached to this present one.

Yet, for all the work my imagination does as it receives this music through my soft, glorious headphones, it is also real, completely real. This band live not so very far away, they play in their own world, despite the present struggles to create a safe place for audiences to gather. Today, that audience gathers in a restaurant in my mind. Today and Yesterday and Tomorrow they play on, and I dance in my lounge room, I sing along to the words I do not understand with my mind, but in my guts, in my heart, in my soul, I understand...

..."Cu balla campa cient'anni"

Those who dance will live one hundred years.

So today, though I dance alone, I know that there will come a day when I will dance with you again.

Sanacori will play for us at the reunion party.

 

The album can be purchased here :

https://sanacori.bandcamp.com/album/sanacori

 

 

Review of: Glyphs of Uncertain Meaning by Tim Gaze

 

I read this book backwards,

it was Tuesday night, around 10,

i was half in

half out

feelin kinda weird

but ok,

so i read the book back to front,

a story in symbols

or, as my son put it,

"like it was written by someone who has heard about calligraphy

but never actually seen any."

Before the word there was the letter

before the letter, the symbol

before the symbol

was,

well,

the mark?

the scratch

the line or curve

or, something protean

like a seed,

or a rain drop.

Glyphs of uncertain meaning, how apt that this book owns up to its intangible message, and promises no wisdom, no solutions, not even beauty.

Just art

before art.

Tim Gaze is a remarkable artist whose work, now regarded as instrumental in drawing together an international community, has always been primarily in book form. Very few single pieces of his work are framed and hung on walls. Instead, he produces hundreds of images, thousands of images, a whole storm of asemic symbols, post-literate visual poetry and calligraphy. His writing on the subject has spanned decades, and his weighty published collections of international asemic art have a proud place on the shelves of many painters, poets and calligraphers around the world.

If you've never heard of asemic art...

well,

the story is just beginning for you.

Tim's new book, Glyphs of Uncertain Meaning can be purchased 

here:

 Also, check out the Post-Asemic Press for more info on the whole 

art-form.

 

 

 (The following two poems were written about me, by my friends)

 

For Morgan

We all know a talented man called Morgan

Who plays LOTS of instruments, except the Organ

With the beat of his drum

Our hips go dum tak dom

As he plucks his guitar strings

Shimmies a plenty the sound brings

His crooning soulful music

Makes us sway and get lost in it

But it’s the words that he writes

That this year has given all our hearts flight

The poetry that makes our soul dance

His way with words is a thing of romance

Thank you for sharing this gift

Pre-rehearsal it gave us a lift

Forgive this fabled attempt to replicate

But in its sentiment we wanted to duplicate

The feelings of gratitude all warm and proud

That a personalized poem said out loud

Brings to the receiver, the listener, hearer

In to the light a little clearer!

Written by Sarah Jay and Sarah-Tucker-Boehm

The Gift - For Morgan

To see the world through your eyes, it must be like magic

a place where everything is detailed yet so simple

To see the world through your eyes, with the wisdom of an ancient bard,

paralleled with the enthusiasm of a child seeing everything for the first time

The details, every detail, from the finest thread, to the most delicate sound

woven into a story only you could tell

You are a wordsmith, a music maker, a dream weaver

A seer of wonder in those around you, yet humble in your own 

talents

To see the world through your eyes, it must be like magic

the spark of a heel on the side walk, a dungeon full of dragons, 

a room full of stars, you pull the stars down and weave them around 

us like a warm blanket,

a hug, a cup of the finest hot chocolate

You are a wordsmith, a music maker, a dream weaver, a gift giver

you have a view like no other, the words pour out of you like a 

magnificent waterfall

To see our world through your eyes, it becomes magic

A true gift is one that is given without expectation,

You are a wordsmith, a music maker, a dream weaver,

You are a true gift giver

Written by Regan Gardner