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Interview Articles - Ann Mortifee

Ann Mortifee - Canadian Singer-Songwriter

Every door is a magic door

Ann Mortifee

Canadian singer/songwriter Ann Mortifee has definitely taken the “road less travelled”. Some may remember her for her rousing song “Healing Journey” during the closing ceremonies of the Commonwealth Games in Victoria, B.C. Others will know Ann for her recordings, performances and musicals, such as “Reflections on Crooked Walking.” And more will have met Ann through the workshops she facilitates at Hollyhock Farm on Cortes Island on the West Coast.

It was during one such workshop in 1991 that we met up with her in the vegetable garden at Hollyhock for a television interview for the local station CRTV. The name of the TV series was “Opening Doors - Keys to Health and Happiness” and the theme music was the song “Every door is a magic door” from her musical. Ann had dropped out of the music scene for a few years and this interview was geared to finding out why, and what her vision was of the work that lay ahead of her. It was transcribed and used in a story in the book “Sliced Bread".

Rosemary Phillips: (To camera) Welcome, and through this opening door we are going to be speaking with our special guest, singer/songwriter Ann Mortifee. The subject today is Healing with Music. Welcome Ann. You're here at Hollyhock giving a workshop. Could you tell us what this is all about?

Ann Mortifee: I've always felt that music has a wonderful healing energy because it has healed me in so many ways and was such an important part of my own inner journey. About five years ago I was asked by Hollyhock to come and lead a workshop. I didn't have a clue of what I could possibly teach, but since then I've realised that it's in the process of people being together, sharing and telling their stories, making sounds together, moving together, and dancing together, that something is awakened, and we just have a fabulous time. In the course of five days we discover where we are in life. So few of us take time out to be in our own lives, in our own bodies, and in our own stillness, to ask, "What do I really want to do with my life? Am I in the right place? Am I doing what's good for me?"

Ann Mortifee at Hollyhock Farm on Cortes Island - Healing with music

The whole process of the workshop is to sing. Singing, for me, connects us to the soul, or the inner being. We do a lot of singing, relaxing, just being out in nature, and having fun together. We suddenly remember that part of ourselves which loves life but gets bogged down by day to day routine.

Rosemary Phillips: You say you have come leaps and bounds with the group that you are now working with. Could you expand on how that has been happening?

Ann Mortifee: I think that I've gone through changes. I don't think they've changed. I've changed. Every time I go through a change in my life everyone around me gets better. What I've discovered is that most of us spend most of our lives out of our bodies. We're out there in the future, worrying about where we are going, worrying about our lives, how we are going to pay the mortgage, what we are going to do, and whether or not we are in the right place. Or else we can be in our past, concerned about whether or not we did something right or wrong. When we are right in ourselves, in the moment, we can actually know what our next step is.

Ann Mortifee and being in the now

I discovered a few years ago that I spent most of my life out of my body thinking, "I should be this way, I should be that." My mind was thinking like my mother's, or my father's, or school teacher's. I found so much of myself was governed by society and the people around me, and I didn't even know it. Once I realised that there was an inner world where I was myself, and once that concept became clear to me then I started to be in my own life. It's this concept that we work with in the group at Hollyhock.

I think there's been a shift in the world. More and more people, such as John Bradshaw, are actually realising that who I am is important and who you are is important, and that I'm not going to be fulfilled unless you are fulfilled and vice-versa. There really is a shared journey that we are all taking. I'm amazed at what's happening in the world, at how many people are aware that there's more to life than what they have been living.

Rosemary: So you've been noticing quite a shift in consciousness in the last number of years?

Ann: Tremendous. Ten years ago people thought most of the things I was writing about were totally bizarre. Now I feel like suddenly I'm in sync, and everybody knows what I'm talking about. Being up here (at Hollyhock) is wonderful because we meet a lot of other people who have been on a journey, have also had the experience of being alone, struggling to find themselves and the purpose of their lives. Suddenly we are finding each other, and that there are hundreds of us around. We're all alike and doing the same thing.

I fly over to Germany or London and it's the same, meeting people on the path. I can spot them on the street now. It's so exciting.

Rosemary: (To camera) I should mention that we are at Hollyhock Farm and that we're sitting in the garden. Behind us we have tomatoes, hollyhocks, marigolds and all around us, the foods of the farm.

Ann: And it's magnificent. Just being here you realize that the earth has plenty. It's so plentiful, so rich. And being here is important to me, especially at this time in my life, because I've just come through a deep process.

R: Maybe you could go into that. We'd like to hear about it.

Ann Mortifee on her own inner journey

A: About three years ago I realised that I was on a treadmill and that I was working to support the people I worked with. I never had any time to discover who I was. I had become a mother and was finding that very very difficult. I was having to leave my son and go away and do work. That was difficult. There were so many things going on in my life that didn't feel authentic. I had created Ann Mortifee into this person who was committed to life and service to the planet. I was at this benefit, and that benefit, and I was - everywhere. I really believed that the world could not survive without me. I was exhausted all the time, just feeling I had to work, that I had been given this gift of voice and that if I wasn't making a contribution to the planet I had no right to be here. And on, and on, and on. I was exhausted.

One day a balloon popped, and I quit everything. I closed my company, I stopped all the touring I had to do, I stopped all my work, I left my relationship. I stopped. I said to the universe, "To whom it may concern - I quit! I don't want to do this. I quit." I basically communicated to myself, to the world, to whomever I was communicating to, that I would never sing again unless it was joyful and effortless. And that was it.

I didn't sing for two-and-a-half years. I went on my own journey, on an inner road, and it was extremely powerful. I realised that I had created this persona, Ann Mortifee, this loving being who was so committed to the world. I created her because of my feelings of inadequacy. So I went into those feelings and I lived them fully, and experienced the place where I didn't feel that I had anything really authentic to give. I moved into an extremely painful phase, because I didn't know who I was. If I was not Ann Mortifee, and I didn't know what my purpose was on the planet, who was I? Then I really began to discover that it was not what I do that was important, it is who I am. And so, in a very quiet way I started to heal, by gardening, being with nature, being with my son, living the most terrifying thing of all - I was terrified of being a housewife, a mother. That was, to me, terrifying, whereas I was totally happy with climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro or cutting through the jungles of Africa. And so I faced my greatest terror and I died to a part of myself. Then out of this came a most incredible joy and ease.

R: It's noticeable with you. You seem more peaceful.
A: I am.

R: This experience in some way touches on the character of Madame O in Reflections on Crooked Walking, the sorceress, that part of us we don't like to recognise.

A: I was denying many things. I could not admit that I was angry, that I had violent energies, that there was a darkness in me, that I was outraged by life, that I didn't want to be this way. I couldn't go into the depth of grief and disappointment that I felt. I was terrified of how resigned I felt. I was out there cheerleading the world on, saying that we can learn to live, not just survive. Meanwhile, underneath that surface I was feeling, "It's hopeless. I'm never going to be happy. Life is never going to have meaning."

R: What's that line from Reflections, "Life is wonderful - isn't it?"

A: Exactly. Madam O was my opportunity to go into the dark parts of myself, the denied parts of myself, and claim them and say, "I can be big enough to hold her. I can be this angry, this loving, this true, this wrong, this everything - all at once."

R: You have now come out the other end of that journey and produced a new recording Serenade at the Doorway. Could you tell us how this came about?

A: Well it was wonderful. I had told To Whom It May Concern, "If you want me to sing again you bring someone to my door. You tell them to tell me exactly what to sing about, or I'm never doing another album as long as I live."

Ann Mortifee writes “Serenade at the Doorway” - on death and dying

That's exactly what happened. David Feinstein, a wonderful psychologist from Ashland, Oregon, had written a book called Rituals for Living and Dying and while he was writing his book he had been listening to my albums. I had met him at a conference a year before, and he kept calling me and saying, "I know you are meant to write an album for people facing death."

I kept saying, "I'm not singing anymore, I've given that up."

He kept phoning and phoning and finally he said, "I've bought myself a ticket and I'm coming to stay with you for five days. I don't care if we walk in the garden all the time, I don't care. I've got to come. I feel so sure about your next move."

So he came and I finally got the message. I realised that I had been going through a death process, that I had been facing death. I realised that when we are facing death it's not just the death of our bodies, it can be the death of a dream, the death of a relationship, or the death of a way of being, and these deaths are just as poignant and hard to let go of. I discovered that all our small deaths can prepare us for the final letting go.

I was now prepared and ready to do this album and in three days the whole thing was written. I've barely changed anything. I had to work with a few lyrics here and there, but basically it just came out as we did it. We'd sit together, I'd close my eyes, we'd talk about the song, and then I'd just sing it. "To every life must come an ending..." And he'd go tick tick tick tick tick tick with a computer. Somehow the tick tick tick tick tick tick of his typing got me right into the music.

The album (Serenade at the Doorway) has just been selling magnificently and I'm not doing a thing. I haven't done a thing. I haven't tried to sell it, I've just created it, and it's selling itself. People have just been stepping forward in hospices and so forth, and been saying, "This has really been helpful to us. How can we help you sell it?" So we've made relationships with hospices and organization, AIDS organizations, and therapists working with child abuse, and all sorts of things.

R: The message is so important. I thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for sharing this time here and for the work that you have been doing, being brave and bold enough to give us this kind of music, to help us through our own healing.

(To camera) And we're going to close the show by listening to a segment from Serenade at the Doorway. This particular song is “Healing Journey”. Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next week.

Ann Mortifee now lives on Cortes Island and continues her work with Hollyhock Farm. For more information on her music, her recordings, her workshops and her writing visit her web site: Ann Mortifee.

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