it's not separate, maybe, it never was

November 29, 2020  /  Jude

I have wondered - for way too long - about my roads and choices -

if I was one thing and one thing only if I identified [and was identifiable] as one clear thing

simply a jazz singer, would I be further down that road?

a theatre maker

a performer in other people’s work

purely a celebrant . . .

utterly a vocal coach


and yet and yet

what unites them all?

this life, this particular vehicle of expression?

My me-ness, your-you-ness. Our we-ness.

Our absurd, beautiful and heart wrenching, gut mangling human-ness.


So I shall forever more stop apologising or excusing - inwardly or outwardly - my sense of too much-ness. Too vagueness, to scattered-ness. It all adds up.

It’s a multifaceted rode we walk . . . roll, skip and dance . . .


and yet and yet

what unites them all

the threads of this, my working life

human specificity, a deep love of story, joy of connection, shifting atmospheres, facilitating transformations - inside and out, visible and invisible transitions. All of that. And feeling the feels.

One of my earlier memorys of voice, story, connection was lying in my bedroom aged 10 - the lights out - and singing ‘Maybe’ from Annie and crying, crying, crying, tenderly the tears streamed. [For those of you that don’t know the musical wonder* that is the 1982 original Annie* please see footnotes!]. And my mum had starting working shifts again so in my little 10 year old system I did feel abandoned, alone, in the dark and lost somehow. My real life actual dad came through to check I was ok - yes, I’m just singing to myself.

I was singing my feels / practising my twang, empathising into the darkness for every little someone who felt utterly lost, alone, abandoned, grieving. Finding creative ways to tap into the unfolding of a human heart.

So it is, with jazz, acting, theatre making, ritual tending, event creating, ceremony writing, in conversation with life and death. We find ways to connect, to get vulnerable and transform this to that, maybe…

Maybe it’s time for me to own it - in song, writing, ceremony, mothering, gardening, cooking, dancing - all of it.




  • pending your threshold for American twang! [My Granny by the same name - Annie - couldn’t stand it!]

  • Borrowed from Wikipedia: In 1933, during the Great Depression, a young orphan named Annie is living in the Hudson Street Orphanage in New York City which is run by Miss Hannigan, a cruel alcoholic who forces the orphans to clean the building daily ("It's the Hard Knock Life for Us"). With half of a locket as her only possession, Annie remains optimistic that her parents, who left her on the doorstep as a baby, will return for her ("Maybe").