Our Blood
Everything Has A Story
May 2020, on a beautiful Spring day, at noon precisely, Shanna Shalla, my Great, Great, Great Grandmother, from the Susquehanna Tribe, presented herself to me in Spirit, through my mind's eye, quietly as I sat in stillness in my front room, bathed in sunlight. She was cloaked in black, with huge, absorbing eyes. Eyes that have the ability to see more than one world view. As a Native American woman, assimilated into a white immigrant family, she told me she spent her life feeling out of place.
She heard the songs of her ancestors in her dreams. Christian values didn’t explain to her how she could hear the wind speaking or her birth Mother comforting her through a mourning dove's song. Her deeper spiritual knowing didn’t align with the Father, Son, Holy Spirit trinity and it was confusing to her. She shared with me the feeling of her lonlieness so I could understand a little deeper.
We talked about many things. Shanna told me, “It’s still going on- people not fitting into the American story. Attacks from without, attacks from within. People are still turning on each other. There have been terrible mistakes made.”
She said people used to sing to each other. This was how people communicated- through song. She felt the songs in her Spirit, even though she never heard them sung on Earth. Shanna Shalla said, “My blood is your blood, no matter how long the distance of the strand in the Great Web of Life. Your soul is a vessel. Luminescent.” She asked me to use my voice to sing her story. “Sing to the timelines of the land.” She showed me a Bear and told me to see the sky as a living animal. “Everything has a story.” (Artwork channelled prior to words or music- oil crayon & acrylic on rag paper, rubber stamp)
Breaking the Rules
When I was a little kid, I loved the story that my Grandmother told me about our late Grandmother Shanna Shalla. She always ate her dessert first. It was a funny thing and made me laugh. I instantly liked this mysterious, rebellious relative. At the time, Shanna Shalla told my Grandmother she always ate her dessert first so she would have room for it and enjoy it before she was full from the meal.
Shanna Shalla told me something different.
She explained it was her way of breaking the rules. “It was a way I could say the rules and order of things don’t make much sense to me. I didn’t have many ways I could break the rules. Do you see?”
Our Blood (by Stash Magnetic, released October 2021, Stash Magnetic Records)
https://stashmagnetic.bandcamp.com/album/our-blood-magnetic-mix-duncan-gray-remix
Our blood runs together
Our blood runs together
Our blood runs together
Everything has Spirit
Everything has Meaning
Everything has Power and Voice
This is the basis of Energy
Our blood runs together
Our blood runs together
Everything has Spirit
Everything has Meaning
Everything has Power and Voice
This is the basis of Energy
Our blood runs together
Our blood runs together
You are the voice of our story
No edges the same
Mistakes, they are made
Everything has Spirit
Everything has Meaning
Everything has Power and Voice
This is the basis of Energy