Beauty, music, bellydance, the Dark Goddess, Nature, magick, ritual-theatre, death and love.

compendium of Aepril's communications on art, beauty, bellydance, the dark, faery tale, nature, magick, ritual, theatre, death and love. The talk of a priestess and shaman of the Dark Goddess.

Monday, February 16, 2009

The redemptive power of making art...

I love all my songs from The Furies' Prayer. I own them fully and lovingly...

My childhood was one that was filled with confusion, pain, and hardship. Though I also had a lot of joy, I had to struggle to survive.

My album The Furies' Prayer is partly a testament to that time, and to my life as a volatile and confused young adult. I love this album with all my heart, as well as loving that person that I once was (and still am), again, with all my heart. And, in fact, many of the songs aren't autobiographical at all, but come from putting myself into the shoes of others who have endured hardship and torment--the disempowered, the scapegoated, the sacrificed, etc. I have also explored the darker nature of sex and love through this album, as well as the sacred erotic. I have spoken as the Dark Feminine.

I am truly, madly, fiercely in love with the power of art. I believe it has saved my life.

After releasing The Furies' Prayer in Dec 2006, I stopped making music. This was due in part to the fact that my bellydance life began to take over in strange and wonderful ways. But there's also something else: I said what I wanted--what I NEEDED--to say in that album. I named the demons; I screamed and screeched at them, I fought them and lived through them and dreamed them and accused them and wept over them and fucked them and let them do their best and worst to me until...
Change.

Yeah. Wow. I guess so.

It's a funny thing how healing can sometimes sneak up on you, how you can suddenly realize that the person you thought you were is now altered, changed. Isn't that what I always wanted?...

So I sit at my keyboard now, knowing that it's time to make music again. What currently haunts me? It's not so much the betrayals and the rage and the feelings of powerlessness.... No, it's different now.... Oh, not that I can say that I am no longer tormented and angry-- like many an artist, I will always have a membership in that club. There are many elements and themes in my previous work that I still need to work with and explore and express...
It's just that, well, the emphasis is different...shifted.

Love is stronger than death...

Coda died one year and six months ago. My Soul Mate, my Dream Boat, my Cerberus. Thus far, I have been unable to write about him to music. I have danced my grief as The Washer at the Ford, but I haven't sung it...it seems that the grief is too big to say, to sing, it has had to be expressed with my body first.

But there's more. Coda's death put me face to face with Death. As in the mythical stories of mere humans beholding deity without a guise, it nearly extinguished my soul. Death laughed in the face of my selfishness and narcissism, of my needs and expectations and wish to control the outcome. But, as it released Coda from an old and tired body, it also released me from some of the things that bound me to my pain. I was left with grief, yes, but oh, how I loved that boy...My heart could burst with it...Love, pure love, terrible, liberating, joyous, immortal LOVE.

Love.
Love IS stronger than Death.
Love is what matters. Nothing else really does. Love is what heals. Love is not always fluffy, happy, easy, pastel. But it does bring joy, fulfillment, life. There is no point living without it. And there is not a soul that can't have it. (There is always someone to love.)

Death has been my teacher. Art has been my savior. Love is my reason.

My heart is open. I create. I heal. I change. I live.

My music as Aepril Schaile and the Judgement:
www.myspace.com/aeprilschaile


Coda as a young man

2 comments:

  1. Aepril....what an amazing performance! I mean, really. Being a belly dancer myself for over 18 years I have see a lot of alternative styles. Mostly I hate them...you transcend that infusing and embodying the dance with your true spirit, honestly and truely. I couldn't take my eyes off you. Everything from your costume choice, makeup, music (I LOVE that music), choreography from beginning to end.. truly entertaining, theatrical and meaningful.
    Akasha (robin)

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  2. Dear Aepril,

    Thank you for sharing your thoughts and vision with us. As an artist myself I find reading about the creative process of others fascinating.

    We share similar views on love & art & I hope that you keep writing as what you say and create is a great inspiration.

    Best wishes from New Zealand, your music crosses oceans, Julia.

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