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​Claiming your inner Mermaid

a theological postcard in appreciation of Gyða Valtýsdóttir's album Evolution

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The bravery it takes to come in embodiment on the planet today &
the celebration of being alive & being in a body.  I guess merfolks
[mermen and mermaids] are the missing link in our history of evolution.
                                                                                         
                                                                             Gyða Valtýsdóttir


The lure to say "yes" to bodily life, in an age fraught with suspicion of
the body and fear what is different, is one of the primary ways in which
the Eros toward life - whose very body is the universe -- is
immanent within the world.  This Eros -- God --
calls us to glide with others.  To be mermaids.

                                                                                Process Theology


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How Gyða Valtýsdóttir created Evolution

“Evolution was an effortless birth. So much so that I thought - is this allowed! I have always given value to blood, sweat and tears so this was a new process for me. Whenever I felt even the softest touch of resistance, I let it guide me in other directions. The work didn’t listen to my suggestions of it being a little more this or that. In the end it decided its own course and it was genuinely uplifting to simply surrender to its demands.” 

​-- Gyða Valtýsdóttir

Gyða Valtýsdóttir's album as a Hymn to Gliding

Mermaids play a powerful role in the history of cultural evolution.  Sometimes they are malevolent creatures, but I have in mind mermaids of the benevolent type.  By mermaids I mean loving mermaids.

The loving mermaids are vessels for a human dream and a human need: that of claiming our bodily life in a way that is free from friction and free for love.  Gyða Valtýsdóttir's music is sometimes described as ethereal.  I think it is better described as beautifully bare, like a mermaid.

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Particularly in times of turmoil, but not in them alone, we rightly seek our inner mermaid.  We might call the actualization of our inner mermaid as "mindfulness" or "wu-wei" or "gentle love" or simply "gliding."
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Our inner mermaid is that side of us which moves -- or seeks to move -- in a restful and gliding way through water, alive to the soft flow of sounds and to images of fresh possibilities.  It is psychedelically vulnerable and yet very strong in its capacity to swim. 

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God can be understood as a mermaid, too.  She is on the side of life and seeks happiness for all living beings, like a Buddhist bodhisattva who returns to the world again and again until all living beings can be saved.   She is the womb of the universe, and the universe is her body.

​​Gyða Valtýsdóttir's new album - Evolution -- is, for me, a hymn to gliding, human and divine.  The album is aptly named.   It is sometimes said, by those who don't know, that the evolution of life on earth was, and is, a purely mechanistic and amoral process, indifferent to the lure of reverie.  But this is not entirely true.  Even as evolution unfolds through natural selection and the pressures of environmental stresses, it is simultaneously lured by dreams of gliding through water, dreams of new life, dreams of swimming with others, dreams of harmony.  It is lured by what the philosopher Whitehead calls "the harmony of harmonies."

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The dreams are in human beings, in other animals, in plants, and in minerals.  We process theologians call them initial aims.  These dreams are in the world but not of the world; they are an arriving of heaven on earth.  We find our humanity - our capacity to live lightly on the earth and gently with others -- as we respond to the lure of gliding.    (J McD)

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I Annarri Vidd
(in another dimension)

​Gyða Valtýsdóttir

from Rosa Gollan of New Sounds Radio, 

"If the Beatles’ tumultuous studio sessions for Let It Be were at one end of the album-making spectrum, then it seems that recording G Y D A’s new album, Evolution, was at the other end.
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Gyða Valtýsdóttir is a trained classical cellist, founding member of Iceland’s múm (pron. “miooyyuujm”), and has worked with the likes of Ólöf Arnalds, Jónsi (Sigur Rós), the Kronos Quartet and the Dessner brothers (The National).
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According to Gyða, the process of making Evolution was effortless, with attention given to physical and mental health, good food, green tea, and pre-session meditation. And the result is certainly heard in this ethereal, spiritual, otherworldly record, perhaps no more than on the Wurlitzer-filled track ‘Í Annarri Vídd’ (‘In Another Dimension’), which she calls the “mother potato” of the record.'

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Moonchild and its Video

​"Moonchild was written on the one moon birthday of Anika Loa, my partners baby, which he created & co-parents with his amazing friend Jenni. She was born on a full moon and we had a little moon celebration on the next full moon. She´s also a cancer, so a true Moonchild. 

My idea for the video was to show the Moonchild in everyone - the bravery it takes to come in embodiment on the planet today & the celebration of being alive & being in a body. Me & Rebekka Rafnsdóttir brought our iphones to the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island & filmed the colorful merman & maids. I guess mer-folks are the missing link in our history of evolution ;) 

We finished filming in my mom´s garden in iceland. On the very last day of editing we decided to call few ladies to jump into the pool with me. I´m so grateful for their spontaneity. We edited for two sleepless nights before i went on tour. Something happened with the psychedelic state you reach with no sleep - which concluded the video. 

It was wonderful to work with Rebekka - though we were both an absolute beginners at editing. We both knew the video already existed, we just had to find it. So we were very synchronize in the irrational floaty process it takes to create a thing already existing."  From GYDA's Bandcamp: https://gyda.bandcamp.com/track/moonchild​

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