This is a lesson-demonstration of how a communal harvest dance at Lúnasa, a bend of wild Irish willow and the somatic memory of a father’s tin whistle helped me build destiny instead of inheriting fate.
It’s available in two parts:
Part I: Timespinning (Salley Ring)
Photographic demonstration of how I reconnected to an ancestral lineage of basket weaving through community, craft and somatic awareness of time. You can scroll down view it here or download and view the zine:
Part II: Craft & Somatic Memory
Written documentation of how timespinning—the process of recovering broken traditions—works and a guide to exploring it in your own practice.
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Part I: Timespinning (Salley Ring)
Before I sang Down by the Salley Gardens in my last recital in high school, someone gave me a photo they found of my father
He was killed four years earlier by a drunk driver in a motorcycle accident
If you listen.
Thank you to Daire Spillane, Maria Kerin, the North Clare Dance Creamery, Michael Walsh, Sinead Kerin, Jackie Askew and, of course, the Sallies of Clare.
Part II: Craft & Somatic Memory
“Oh, you’ll be alright,” Daire said to the quivering tree as she reached out to cut the willow wands from its branches.
I was hesitating to make the slice and floundering in the briars, and this would not do.
“We’re going to make a dance with you,” she assured the salley, famous for its resilience.
Suddenly I’m back in the briars with my mother, father and sister in the ditch of the motorway near our house harvesting blackberries, blueberries and raspberries. Every year we made enormous batches of jarred jams, including with strawberries from the Mormon fields leftover from when they had settled in Ohio before being forced to move on to Nevada.
Like many Roma and Sinti, baskets and wreaths were important in our home as both function and decoration. The wreaths and baskets my mother decorated are still sacred to me. Gypsies have long been known for basket weaving, but the actual weaving of plants into something that can be used was one of the traditions my family stopped practicing some time ago. This was not a great tragedy, especially as we had so many other traditions to keep busy with.
