Eolath was a counsellor who worked in Northern Ireland. He was a profoundly spiritual man; he wrote a song called ' A Man is an Angel'. He was a force of nurture and Nature in such a way that he enabled people to see, truly, what it might mean for a man to be an angel. It was this, I think, which made him a strong influence on shaping the field of therapy within Northern Ireland. Sadly he died of cancer before he reached his 60th year.
My connection with Eolath was that he was my first therapist, I worked with him from the ages of 16-18. He was also a friend of my family, and he has a deep connections to many members of the Smith-Torney and Bailey clans. The inspiration for this blog came from listening to a CD which Eolath wrote the songs and poems for: he was also a musician and lyricist. When I listened to this CD I was absolutely bawling my eyes out; this meant a lot to me, because I recently came off medication for anxiety and depression, and since then there seemed to have been an overhang of not feeling a great deal at all, a side effect which that medication induced. I had been wondering where the sense of connectedness and channeling had gone to, and it felt really good to come back to it, and to myself, in a way.
There were two quotes which stood out from that spout of bawling: the first one was 'when I saw you I hope you know, I tried to see you with eyes of God' (from the song 'Feathers of the One Bird's Breast', I think). I am not going to look into in this post, it feels like a private thing I have yet to work out.
The second quote that stood out was 'I have only one task,one responsibility, to call myself back into my heart, into my Godship, from where I came'.* There are two things that struck me about the quote: the first was the place for me of writing as 'the one task...to call myself back into my heart'. I feel that for me writing has a pivotal role in that task of calling back. The second was the potential radicality of asserting that there is only this one task to do, in the context of hyper-capitalism.** This makes more sense in the wider context of the poem, written below.
Turning to the first point: the pivotal role of writing in that task of calling the self back into the heart, is becoming more and more clear to me, personally, at the present time. In therapy, when I speak from my truest self and from my depth, it comes naturally to me to speak poetically, to use metaphors and images to describe my experience. In academia, when I write about queer, trans and feminist experience, through the lense of my own experience, I feel that somehow I am given a place and I settle like a pool clearing, into a deeper sense of who I am.
I am reminded, as I write, of a passage from Zami by Audre Lorde. Lorde writes about her experience of feeling quiet in her romantic relationship, and of being a good listener. She says '... my primary function in conversation was to listen. Most people never get a chance to talk as much as they want to, and I was an attentive listener, being really interested in what made other people tick'. This is something that has a great resonance with me, as someone who both considers themselves as quiet and a good listener, and as someone considering a career as a therapist. Lorde goes onto talk about how she enjoyed reciting stories as part of her job as children's clerk at the New York Public Library. She says 'It felt like reciting the endless poems I used to memorize as a child, and which I would re-tell to myself and anybody else who would listen. They were my way of talking. To express a feeling, I would recite a poem. When the poems I memorized fell short of the occasion, I started to write my own'.(Zami: 187). I can relate to this experience, too, and I am interested in it because she rejects the binary of introverted/ extroverted, and the idea that being quiet and/ or a good listener necessarily meaning that one is not expressive in and of oneself. She has simply found a different channel through which her energy flows, and this I can relate to. Indeed I suppose that I want this blog to become an extension of that channel. Over the past 2 years I have been seeking to find my own voice. The whys and wherefores of my obsession with the the voice and voicelessness are another thing that merits a post in and of itself. Suffice to say at this point, that over the past couple of years, I feel that I have both grown in my voice and found some peace with my quietness; if I manage to speak my truth and be heard I am content.
To explain the second point that I found interesting about the quote from Eolath's poem, its political content, I would like to situate it in the wider context from which the quote is taken:
He glimpses his God-ship, his true source,
yet still he believes, still he fears, his source is in his deeds.
We will sing to him; until he knows on the cellular levels he need do nothing.
I have only one task, one responsibility:
to call myself back, back into my heart, back into my God-ship, from where I came.
I feel that this sentiment is radical, because the notion that we need to be productive in order to be of value is so engrained in us; not just as capitalists, as members of the so called 'rat-race', but also as activists. It seems sometimes, especially within activist culture, that the extent to which queers, feminists, people of colour and freaks and outsiders of all varieties are made to feel by society that they are without social value drives us to produce, to prove ourselves above and beyond the the 'normal'. And while I love the incandescence of strength creation that acticism can illicit, it touches me to be told and hear 'you need do nothing...(you) have only one task...to call yourself back...into your heart', to recall myself to an unconditional acceptance of myself; to remember the place of intuition and clarity in creating my path for me, and to remember the place that Nature has in holding me. Or, to put another angle on it, and to draw from Lorde again 'Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
― Audre Lorde
― Audre Lorde
To conclude this post, the song from Eolath and the passage from Lorde are rich for me both in terms of coming to therapy and coming to writing; and also in articulating a relationship between these two callings. As their personal narratives are the weave, so the social context to their narratives is apparent as the weft. This is the structure that I want to work with here, in this blog. I feel called to each of these writers and guides, both as I stand as a client and a recent student, and as I negotiate my desire to transition to the role of counsellor and teacher. I suppose that that desire is what has delivered this blog into being; I am very grateful to have Eolath and Lorde, amongst others, as my guides, and I hope to draw out these themes further as this blog grows.
Some Notes
The passage from which the above quote from Eolath is taken goes like this:
.
He glimpses his God-ship, his true source,
yet still he believes, still he fears, his source is in his deeds.
We will sing to him; until he knows on the cellular levels, he need do nothing.
I have only one task, one responsibility:
to call myself back, back into my heart, back into my God-ship, from where I came.
I'm not too sure of copyright Law, so I am not going to quote the whole thing. All rights Eolath Magee and Maranu Gasgoine.
*You will notice, by the by, that Eolath very much spoke through Christian imagery. I found myself initially a bit put off by this, for reasons probably best summed up in this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxRmzq3Azs4. This clip is from the comedy sketch show Little Britain, and this is Judy's standard reaction when she comes close to people of colour or gays. I worry that, whilst there are many Christian's who re-write and resist this script for Christianity, if I expose myself to Christian ideas then I am opening myself up to hangover at least from this kind of toxicity in it's undealt with form (to extend the vomit metaphor nicely, heh). However, having said this, I believe that Christian language was just one of many vehicles Eolath could have spoken through to voice his compassion, and that the spirit with which he spoke was entirely open to all people and free of such dogma.
**FYI,
I would like to dedicate another post to the various ways in
which therapy may or may not be radical (whatever that means...), and
how my political belief in anti-oppression and anti-capitalism and my
engagement with therapy clash, collide and cuddle over the issue of that
radicality and its contestation. Watch this virtual space.
