Lady of the Well: An Interview with Mirabai Ceiba's Angelika Baumbach

Mirabai Ceiba’s Angelika Baumbach wrote ‘Lady of the Well’ after losing a dear friend she had first met beside a well in Ireland.  With Carrie Tree, she sings for their friend Saskia, whose spirit lingers in water, wind, and the space between worlds.  

Angelika’s wove together the journey of this song in this powerful  interview:

SV: ‘Lady of the Well’ feels like both a farewell and a love song to friendship. Can you share about the experience that shaped the essence of the song?

Angelika:

This song was first born as a poem. 

It is dedicated to our dear friend Saskia Byrne, who we became very close with during our time in Ireland.  Then we experienced her departure from this world also from very close.

This poem was written a day after she passed. It was during a long walk through a lush Irish forest, with that sixth sense that awakens when those portals open and I could just feel her everywhere in nature so clearly. “ in every singing tree, in the green lushness so alive.”

It then became a song to sing to her in her great leap, but also to sing to myself, to help me integrate this great shift.

SV: How did Ireland itself — its mist, forests, and folklore — find its way into the sound and feeling of the track?

Angelika:

The harp was in its home country , and it is a song that was written with the harp. It all happened in the end of May, beginning of June, so Ireland was exploding with lushness and beauty. The forest filled with purple flowers. And beautiful new ferns. There was something special about her passing in the most abundant time in Ireland’s powerful nature.

SV: The story unfolds during a very particular moment in time — the lockdowns. How did that collective stillness influence your creative process and relationship with songwriting?

Angelika:

We moved to Ireland in the midst of the lockdown, so it was indeed a very particular experience. To come to a new place where you don’t know anyone, but the circumstance is not propitious at all to meet new people. It was a time that was like a calling from the inside. So our music naturally became somewhat introverted during that time. As if wanting to have a conversation with a quieter side of ourselves. There was also a lot of latent sadness in the air. Which also touched our own sadness deep within. For me it was a good experience having this relationship with sadness as a powerful field of creativity, rather than something just pulling you down. I think Irish people are masters at this, with their such joyful ecstatic melodies to nourish themselves through the harsh grey times in Ireland. There’s a lot of magic in this combination.

SV: You mention that this song began as a poem. How do you know when a poem wants to become a song?

Angelika:

When the circumstance that the poem was written for calls for more than reciting it.  I needed this information to become more like a loving embrace… and music knows very well how to do this.

SV: Many of your songs carry a healing or ceremonial quality. In what way did “Lady of the Well” become a form of healing — for you or for those who listen?

Angelika:

I feel that when the invisible finds its way through someone and becomes a song, it still belongs to something beyond yourself, and in that way it is like an entity who offers a sense of comfort and safety, as well as a collectively shared connection in different realms. Music is such a wonderful resource to connect with the realization that we are alive and that it is a gift.

SV: The piece explores life, death, and “all the questions and portals in between.” How do you hold these themes in your creative life and spiritual practice?

Angelika:

Every day brings a new opportunity to explore life from a different perspective. And also  to remember death, to remember to live fully and with presence.

And with creativity, I also try seize the opportunity to try new things with freshness every day. It does not always work, but life is full of new beginnings.

Something that has accompanied me since many years is silent sitting. This is how I practice to make myself available to perceiving this big cycle of life, death and all the portals in between. 

As part of Mirabai Ceiba, you’ve long created music that celebrates love and connection. How does this work allow you to explore a more personal or intimate side of your artistry.

Our music has been so much more than music. It has been a link to connect with many many beautiful people around the world. We have so many dear friends who would always welcome us in their home, or be willing to help and support in any way. The music we play is and has been like a net that holds us all together in a space of loving friendship and connection, and in sharing this we all have access to a bigger realm that belongs to the invisible . to the place we came from and will return to.

And all this yet bounces back to this intimacy within.

SV: As part of Mirabai Ceiba, you’ve long created music that celebrates love and connection. How does this work allow you to explore a more personal or intimate side of your artistry?  What do you hope listeners feel or remember when they hear ‘Lady of the Well’?

Angelika:

That a song can be like mother earth, it can take in and embrace anything, no matter how painful it is. It transforms it all into new life.

Lady of the well sings about the fragility of life, but also of the thin veil that connects us to other worlds unseen to us in this form. 

Isn’t it so beautiful that we can sing to anything?

SV: Finally, if you could offer one message from your friend — the Lady of the Well — to those listening around the world, what might she whisper through the song?

Angelika:

Saskia was a true weaver of people and community. She was the first person we really met in Ireland, and soon after we met, we were already offering a small house concert at a friend of hers, so that we could meet with the community around us. 

So, when she passed, we all gathered and shared stories, songs and poetry around fires. 

i’d like to think she would say something like this as she parted:

“ and now this thread that I use to weave,  unites us to sing songs, as I dance into eternity”

Listen to 'Lady of the Well'