One woman

And now, I think I can play in 6/8 slip jig time, though my bow slides out of its third lane and is maybe a bit too scratchy for classical, but might fit in, for folk, for trad music-

there’s always a story with a Celtic fiddle tune, the story is as much technique as the ornamentation, the slides, the rolls, the double stops-

I can almost play a double stop now, so it sounds like two violins are playing simultaneously

when really it is just me, one violin.

One woman.

You always said I was magic, a witch.

This wasn’t an insult, you said.

So, there’s always a story with a Celtic fiddle tune and I can do that. I can tell stories. Of how I started playing beneath the paper barks, under magpies and currawongs, listened to music from the West Coast of Ireland, Counties Clare, and Sligo, and no I won’t forget Donegal where the fair folk still emerge in the gloaming-I can tell you that I listen over and over until the music merges with my bones and I feel a rhythm moving through me, and the rhythm,

the rhythm,

brings stories and though I live on stolen land-

I can tell new stories.

I can do all this.

You said I was a witch.

It wasn’t an insult, but maybe a warning?

I am one woman, with rhythm moving through her.