Slow-breaking News from the Subtle World

Greetings fellow yearners and travelers, lovers of language and music, pilgrims and braves, and welcome to Madonna Hamel's blog.

Chasing Light.

For the last few years the title of this blog has been waving at me from across the street, trying to get my attention, like so many of the subjects I intend to cover in writings to come. Like that little bit of lit-up TransCanada Highway as seen from the top of Tunnel Mountain, looking down on Banff, Alberta, on the first week of the new year in the photo above; this title wants to pull you over from the zippy superhighway you're on and suggest there is gold in the hillsides and fruit-stands and lookout points and other roadside attractions of the slower side roads. There are many among us who have followed a ray or a bow of light breaking from a cloud just to see where it lands, and having arrived, have chosen to make that spot a sacred place of humble revelations. here's a place to consider what those revelations might be.

Soundtrack of Life.

By way of introduction, I've been working primarily in radio for the past 17 years. Over the years I've made documentaries for several CBC programs, including Inside the Music, Tapestry, Dispatches, Sunday Afternoon in Concert, Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, The House, Inside Track. I've been a music programmer for After Hours and Breakaway and sat in the host chair for All In A Weekend. For a few years I had the privilege of singing backup in a touring blues band in the States and for 14 years I had my own little trio in Quebec called Aunty Maddy. I come from a musical family, with a mom who taught voice til the day she died and who trained us all in four-part harmony. I was born on Good Friday, pitching my mom into labour as she was rehearsing the church choir for Easter mass.

Telling True Stories.

I got into journalism through my work as a monologuist and a book reviewer. My performances were based on the lives of literary and historical characters. I mused on the life of Lolita at 50; Mary Magdalen in Hollywood and Neandrethal Woman caught in the crossfire of the Gulf war. I review books for the Globe and Mail, (Exit Cafe review)have a 'spiritual practices' column on CBC, an Americana music blog on NoDepression, (Portrait of Lincoln with the Wart)and am working on a new monologue about the lives of rogue nuns. Somewhere between 'fact' and 'fiction' lies the subtle world of energy and mystery where the trick is to rest in the light without trying to grab hold of it. Many writers and musicians, poets and mystics (though definitely not all) practice the art of hanging out in that space, saddled with, yet assuming the task of reminding us of its existence. Because, as the late singer Lhasa de Sela, swore: we all need it really badly.

Between Worlds.

For those who were not lucky enough to see Lhasa de Sela live before she died far too young, you can still hear her music and her radically gentle approach to life in a documentary I made for Inside the Music.( She Moves Between Worlds)It won me a silver medal art deco microphone trophy at the New York festival of World's Best Radio (which is what I am clutching in my blog profile). Lhasa was ( and remains) one of those artists who understands how important it is to listen for the subtle whispers that direct us in essential directions. Her work always addressed the importance of listening to that still-small voice and her integrity served her well, artistically, critically and financially. Her videographer, Ralph Dfouni, (Ralph's video work)described her as woman who was 'systematically working to eradicate hypocrisy from her life'.Just watching someone engaged in such an endeavour can change you forever.

Cutting Butter With a Chainsaw .

So, here I go: armed and laden and buoyed up with my favourite writers and musicians and insights of fellow sojourners, engaged with life, committed to recovery, disgruntled with the ham-fisted perspectives, opinions, and attitudes much of the media and cultural news makers are obsessed with and with whom, or so they claim, we share their obsessions. A wise man once said we live in a time of overkill- we keep 'cutting butter with a chainsaw'. Working in the media I gravitated to the world of documentaries because I could never rise to the frenetic urge and pressure to provide hard-hitting, fast-breaking news. I was asking myself why I had to 'hit' so hard- or why we had to hit at all.My contributions at daily story meetings were mostly called 'too process-y' or 'too feature-y'. Not 'sexy' enough. I'm going on the premise that people are not as incapable of processing the paradoxes of the human condition as we claim they are. Like Lhasa and the Buddhist nun Pema Chodron and poet David Whyte, I'm espousing a look at life in the spirit of 'tender-hearted bravery' (Chodron ) http://www.shambhala.org/teachers/pema/ and a 'robust vulnerability' (Whyte) http://www.davidwhyte.com/;  I'm going to sit at either shore of every day and see what slow-breaking wave from the Subtle World breaks free before me. I bid you join me.

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