Journeying in the Marvelous.

“Life is a deep dive. Initiatory experiences happen to us all the time.
The question is — will we be accompanied on our journeys? Or confirmed when we return?”
— Judith-Kate Friedman

Oral Tradition stories and songs have guided my sense of kinship all my life.
Singing, discovering and then writing songs, ever curious about Time’s great mystery, music was a life-line.
It helped me way-find through a rocky urban childhood (and since!).
Fortunately, those edgy early places became teachers of courage—for, as for so many of us, courage is required.

I’ve found that proximity to the unexpected can make me well up and sing.
As do the causes of justice, and creating and sharing the beauty of the Living World.
Joy, grief, laughter, sheer wonder…..the arts were paths to happiness from my youngest days.
And so it still is.

I’m working on a chapbook called “12 Paths to Happiness Through the Arts.” (Watch this space for updates).
The first path is INSIGHT. Which starts with looking INSIDE. As you read the rest of this page, consider it vis a vis your vantage point.
(As I once sang “Look within. Where we are is where we begin!”)

In his poem, “The Way It Is,” the poet William Stafford writes of a “thread” we follow.
It’s been heartening, and sometimes confounding, to see that the more I get multi-modal in my expressions, the more I hear and see resonances
between all the different disciplines or art forms that arise through me, or peak my interest (whether made by me, through me, or by others).
For instance, the tapestry yarns on this website home page literally reflect a persistent, plucky, and insistent energy.
Even though I didn’t think about this at all when I was weaving them, up at 2,500 feet at Deer Park in the wild Olympic Mountains.
I can also feel the strands of confidence - more in the warp of the threads that hold it all. A dear friend and fellow artist-neighbor Laura Martin,
of blessed memory, wove those strands to get me started. Then I wove the story onto them. Now her energy, no longer a casual thing, upholds
from further afar. These are the things I think about when considering threads of interconnection.

We all carry our some kinds of sustaining touchstones, much like the young girls in old tales.
Sometimes they’re of a place and then if carried in our pockets they become wanderers, nomads, tourists, wastrels….
Far from inanimate, they’re alive and can inform me about each new place of arrival. Just as the threads of yarn were the ones
to speak and say, “no here, more of this” “put me there” “set me down” — How rich life becomes when we listen to everything, essence to essence.

My paths have snaked through Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Western Mass., the Canadian North Woods, Oberlin College and Conservatory in the Ohio heartland, London, parts of Italy, Israel, Indonesia, San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, and most recently the place I now call home:
the deeply quiet woods of the remote rural Pacific Northwest. Marvelously, where I, and a first cousin now live is not far from the shore
where our grandfather first stepped into the US, making his immigrant escape from the Czar’s army via Japan and the Pacific,
more than a century ago.

Oh the marvelous, it continues to beckon and weave, tempted us to new callings and ages-old ones.
In each particle and wave seem to be the message: Listen. And on the outbreath: Sing, express, gesture, land.
I hope you find things on this website and via all the links and portals provided that can support you on your path,
be it to happiness, through trauma, filled with delight, or questioning, danger, or stillness…..
My wish is that you have just enough by way of friends of all species, mettle to make connections, morsels of food, sufficient shelter,
and enough curiousity, care, and good fortune to come through. With enough strength at each landing place to both give thanks,
and to look around and see who else may need a hand.

It’s my honor to be an artist on the cusp of 65, wishing for a long life — for myself, us all, and the planet.
Thanks for coming by this site. I hope our paths may cross literally - be it through the printed or recorded word,
a mythic or musical event on line or in-person. Meanwhile, if you’re so moved, share a story of your origins — and if you like,

And subscribe to my e-list for news and event notices. They’ll mostly come via lo-fi missives.

With love and gratitude,
Judith-Kate

LINKS TO PUBLICATIONS:

• Podcast interviews about myth, story, and Judith-Kate’s work and life with mythsinger and author Daniel “3D” Deardorff.

• “Mandorla Rising” - a multi-modal gallery for Judith-Kate’s M.A. Poetics of Imagination creative dissertation at Dartington Arts School, UK

• Judith-Kate’s poems appear in the recently published Stafford Challenge Anthology 2024-25, in three London Writers Salon Writing in Community anthologies #2 (2022), #3 (2023), and #4 (2024-2025), and in n Arbella Poetry Magazine Winter 21/22.

• Stewarding Daniel Deardorff’s book The Other Within: The Genius of Deformity in Myth, Culture, and Psyche, 3rd ed. (Inner Traditions, 2022).
Available at your favorite booksellers and directly from the publisher.

UPCOMING:
• Stories from The Other Within: Check the events page,

See you in the marvelous!