Faith Healer : 40 Years of Songwriting

Here's another favourite of mine from my Award Winning Album 'Just Another Judas' which was a Folking.com Album of the Month and set me off on a tour of the UK for 18 months with the great Arthur Brown (God of Hellfire) and the late Tim Rose who was part of the The Big Three with Mama Cass in the 60's and wrote for the Grateful Dead in the 70's. We had great fun on that Rose Brown Beer Tour.

Jeff, my life partner is playing with me on this track. I'm on vocals and rhythm guitar, he's playing acoustic lead and bass and our chum Murph is playing Dmbek. Aw such good fun times.

Party Dress: 40 years of Songwriting

Everyone needs a Party Dress when there's a celebration and what better excuse to celebrate than 40 years of Songwriting, which is how long I have been writing songs, yet in many ways, it feels like only 40 heartbeats ago that I penned my first song.

This track, Party Dress is taken from my Award Winning Little Fish Album which was HMV album of the Month and saw me touring stores across the UK. 

Playing saxophone and flute with me is Nik Turner from Hawkwind fame. A fine musician who has gone on to make incredible music in his own right.

6 Baubles for Christmas

A set of six baubles, fit to put a smile on any baby's face, so he gave the shop keeper a three-penny pence piece and put them under his arm. 
       'Keep the change,' he chirped and carefully carried the cheerful glass ornaments to his van. Steady, so as they wouldn't rattle and break, he wrapped them in his jacket and took them home.

She had never had a Christmas before, nor would she remember this, her first one, but for sure she would remember his love for eternity. 

Now the age he was, she unwrapped the old faded tissue paper, holding the two surviving baubles in her hand, placing them ceremonially upon her fireplace.  

Though he was long passed away, she knew that his love would keep her strong through many Christmases and beyond.

Sending you Yuletide Blessings for you and Heartfelt thanks to all those that have ever loved you.

The Power of Publishing

Having made time to deeply reflect upon my work, ground myself in this new now and open my heart to new intentions, I have been working on my website for Parlour Press Publishing. 

I set up Parlour Press Publishing 17 years ago when I was approached by Caerphilly Youth Service to tour Youth Clubs facilitating Creative Writing Workshops. I drafted a plan to extend the project from workshops so that it had a celebratory outcome, a platform from which the young people could have a voice as writers in their own right and to inspire each other. I was taken aback at the power of publishing in terms of its ability to raise self esteem and touch the hearts of many.

Tales from Two Valleys was a retelling of all the local folk tales of the area and won a National Youth Excellence Award from the Welsh Assembly. What I had intended as one project that I essentially ran from my front parlour (and still do to a certain extent) has now facilitated 49 Community Groups to write collections short stories and anthologies of poems, supported in my workshops and then to publish their work into soft back books or more recently, ebooks. 

In addition, Parlour Press has recorded and edited more films and digital stories than I care to remember. This year alone I have been contracted to edit 21 inter-generational digital stories and 2 major website based storytelling projects, one for

Storytelling for Health International Conference and the other for West Wales Sound Healing Centre

Parlour Press has won Best Practice at the International Mental Health Conference held at Cambridge University, a Gold National Care Award, a further Youth Excellence award ... 

I am really very proud of such a huge body of work that has literally changed lives and fed into national policy regarding education and care in Wales.

But I am so busy out there doing the work that I never get time to reflect or design materials to tell anyone about it! It's all grown via word of mouth. So, it gave me great joy to spend time on the website. 

Feel Free to on come over and have a look ... see what you think. I've kept it as simple as possible. I think sometimes less is more when storytelling through a website. 

Oh and if you you'd like to know more about me, you can visit my Cheryl Beer website ... it's also having a major overhaul at the moment so some pages are not quite ready ... 

100,000 BLOG-TASTIC VIEWS

WOWZERS! 100,000 views. Thank you so much for joining me on the ups and downs of my Journey Through the Creative Mind. 

It blows me away that here I am in my little cottage in West Wales, connecting with folk all over the world. You mean the world to me and I love sharing with you in this way. 

I get excited about looking at my statistics and seeing which countries have been reading which blog posts, countries I have never been to, some I have never even heard of!

You have become part of my heart circle. When I am up to my creative shenanigans, I think ... OOoo I'll tell people about that on my blog. I take photo's with you in mind and I care about you.

So, I'll raise a glass here and think of you and hope that wherever you are, you'll do the same for me. 

In the background

I spent this afternoon designing a new background picture for my blog and here it is. The photograph of me is a Selfie that I took during a night time candlelit meditation. I like the way that the light of my candle is captured in my eye. 

The second overlay photograph is a bright daytime shot of the sky in my favourite woods where I go very often to think about the world. Trees share such lessons for life.

So. in the one picture, I hope to have captured the night and day of my journey through the creative mind, reflecting the cycle of life, the ebb and flow of it ...