The Witches Next Door
My Winter Solstice gift came early this year. I don’t have throat cancer. I don’t have acidic pits or devastating erosion in my esophageal lining. I don’t have ominous nodes growing on my vocal cords. My vocal cords are inflamed and a bit strained and that’s part of what’s causing my hoarseness and the changes in my voice, but it’s not the “big C “or even a “little n” and no one is going to cut out my larynx.
So to back up a little bit – A few years ago I wrote a song about Inanna descending to the Underworld to visit her sister, Ereshkigal. The song is not sweet. It is not a beautiful canticle that is sung in rounds by tender, devoted voices. It’s a bluesy, rocking, distortion-laden, voice-wrecker of a song. Imagine Chris Cornell or Joan Osborne belting this out in “Inanna – The Rock Opera” and you’ll get the feel for it.
I knew when I wrote the song that I was already beginning to have vocal problems. My range was changing, my ability to hold the higher notes, even my breathing was different. Singing the lyrics was part devotional and part confessional.
Take my name and all I am. Close the gate behind me
Take my eyes and all I see. Close the gate behind me.
Cause I’m going down to Ereshkigal, down in the deep.
Take my voice and all I say. Close the gate behind me.
Take my heart and all I love. Close the gate behind me.
Cause I’m going down to Ereshkigal, down in the deep.
Over the past two years, my voice has continued to deteriorate. Many of the symptoms pointed in scary directions and, ya know, if you go to Web MD and type in “I have a hang-nail” invariably the response is “You have a rare form of finger cancer.” Turns out that much of what is happening is due to something completely controllable and, with a little vocal re-training, I’ll get to learn new ways to use this instrument that is so precious to me.
And here’s the Pagan part of all of this – You see, as Samhain approached this year and the grief of my father’s passing really settled in on me, I started thinking about the Ancestors and the Mighty Dead of the Craft. One day I’ll be an ancestor. Once day my name will be read at a Samhain ritual. Once day my picture will be on a Samhain altar and there will be no Winter Solstice for me. This past six weeks or so, since Samhain, I’ve been really sitting with that. I broke down at one of the Samhain rituals I attended and wept on Phoenix’s shoulder. All I could manage to say was “I don’t want to be on next year’s altar.” The point was hammered home at the Spiral Dance in San Francisco when I welcomed a friend and Spiral Dance Choir member to the ranks of the Mighty Dead. He had been standing in that very choir just 12 months prior.
It went so much deeper than my mere mortality though. The lyrics of the song became incredibly real. I felt as if all that I had known was being taken away. I descended into the “What ifs.” What would it be like to lose my voice completely? How would my practices and devotions need to evolve if they were done in silence? What would it be like to never say “I love you” again. For a month and a half I have meditated on this subject each day. I’ve sat bolt upright at 3 o’clock in the morning and scared myself silly too. I’ve imagined a life, my life, without words, without singing.
So as we leave the Samhain season behind and come closer to the Solstice, I am feeling my own longest night. My practices and devotions have held me through all of this. Those few friends and beloveds that knew what I was going through held me and let me wallow when I needed to.
I have work yet to do in this world. I have words to write. I have much to say. I have songs to sing, even if I don’t recognize the voice that is singing them just yet. I have adjustments to make and healing to engage with. And there’s another Solstice on the way to remind me that the light will return.
Solstice blessings and peace.
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