Does it ruin the magick of a thing to know how it’s made? Is the sun any less magickal to us now that we know it is a hot sphere of hydrogen and helium that is one of millions of its kind? Or is it somehow even more unimaginable to know how complicated the universe really is?
I remember listening to my first pagan albums—Libana, Reclaiming and Friends, Lisa Thiel—and being caught up in the absolute magick of their creations. Then I made my own pagan album with the Crowwymmin. I had no idea the magick it takes.
Our songs are born around the campfire, on retreat, in the living room, and they grow and flourish organically. Some songs never make it past infancy. Others mature and become part of the canon. Those are selected for the Holy Grail of songdom—The Album.
Songs for The Album are elevated to the next level. They are Metered and Measured and Harmonized and (yikes!) sometimes even Scored. They are practiced and practiced and rewritten and reworked and finally declared…Ready.
Then they go to the studio, where a wizard (in our case an Eagle) weaves a new magic around the music.
We arrive each day at the studio with a Plan. It’s an ambitious plan, with dreams of finishing far before we ever do. There are drums to be unloaded. Many, many drums. And then the percussionist is locked away behind glass and not allowed to emerge until the magick is Complete.
The singers gather in the hallway, dump their “voice friendly” snacks and then haul their goodies into the studio. The 15×15 room fills with singers, each with a music stand, a water bottle, throat spray, lyrics, clothes pins, and pencil. We circle the room, each with her headset and microphone set for her own unique needs. The wizard manifests from his glass room to ready all the magickal tools. Cords shuffle, mic stands adjust, pop screens swivel. The energy builds.
Once the singers warm up and levels are set, the Songs begin to emerge. Yet these are not the Songs we rehearsed. They are right there in our ears, magnifying our mistakes. To hear ourselves, to hear one another, we must stop. Listen. Do you hear?
One take. Okay. Let’s try again.
Second take. Nice. Some good things happened. Keep it and go once more.
Third take…
Fourth take…
Now go back and lay in the harmonies. And the descant. Just one more percussion track.
Five voices become ten. One drummer is four. The magick of the studio makes it all possible.
Now another piece. Who’s in this one? Oh good, I get a break. An anxious break. What’s next? We get tired. We get silly. We get frustrated. We get inspired.
We are sisters.
Making Music.
Making Magick.
