A writer and a folk musician, Andy is the author of ‘Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom’ and has published a range of articles and academic papers on subjects as diverse as psychedelics, paganism, bardism, environmental protest, fairies, shamanism and evolution. A modern day troubadour, he plays mandolin, writes songs, and fronts darkly crafted folk band, Telling the Bees. A leading exponent of the English Bagpipes, he plays for brythonic dancing in a trio called Wod.
For most of us in the cities and towns the weather is just something that happens to us, something inconvenient, an impediment. Perhaps we should pay it more attention. ...
The original medieval troubadours, who expounded the art of Courtly Love through poetry and song and who were embroiled with the heretical ideas of gnosticism and Catharism, owed their existence to...
The sipsi is a small reedpipe, played using circular breathing, with a wild and thrilling sound. I was immediately captivated by the lumpy nine-time rhythms and mind-boggling technique....
The trick of getting a lift is not in persuading someone to stop. It is in being at exactly the right place at the right time such that the person who would give you a lift and is heading your way...
And don't kites just lend themselves to metaphor? They punctuate the sky, return it to a human scale. They hug the wind. Our minds can't help but follow them up into the empyrean; watching them, we...
To be an activist is to suffer defeat after defeat after defeat. Without spirituality to recharge and revive us the danger is we fall into bitterness or despair or worse, self-righteousness. ...
