<![CDATA[Fire and Mud - Blog]]>

<![CDATA[Fire and Mud - Blog]]>Thu, 09 Apr 2026 13:01:15 -0700Weebly<![CDATA[FieldNOTES: we are not adrift]]>Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:14:07 GMThttp://www.fireandmud.org/blog/fieldnotes-we-are-not-adrift

More and more, I’m finding that it’s going to be very appropriate that I move with the camera. So far the camera has been stationary, even though I’ve changed angles and tightness, the camera has been stationary through the whole first act.

In my reading today, Francis Schaeffer was marking a significant change in filmmaking that was influenced by philosophical rationalism, which says that humans are in a machine and they really have no freedom, creatively or otherwise.

Bergman‘s film the silence “is a statement of the belief that man is really dead. It introduces a new kind of cinema ——-the camera eye simply looks at life and reports it as meaningless in non-human terms. The film is a series of pictures with no human statement connected with them.”

It seems to me that the choice of making the camera stationary as an inanimate object in act one will be sharply contrasted by the camera as I move it in act two, which may give the footage a very different relational feel. I think it could be really significant.

]]><![CDATA[Dream Board for Master Bedroom]]>Tue, 06 Jan 2026 18:02:41 GMThttp://www.fireandmud.org/blog/dream-board-for-master-bedroomDreaming about a new seating area in our master bedroom...and maybe a wallpaper accent wall...

Update 01/08/2026: I've ordered the furniture in this design board. The thing I'm waiting on is the wallpaper, only because it is sure to be expensive and then I need to hire someone to install it. There's no way I'm pretending that I can do it myself. The one element that I'm unsure of is the accent pillow. On its own, I love this print, however, I remain uncertain if it will really complement the chair and, more broadly, the rest of the room. Maybe I will take more pictures of the broader room elements to reflect visually before deciding or hunting for another pattern.

]]><![CDATA[I have become a dame blue]]>Thu, 20 Nov 2025 16:59:20 GMThttp://www.fireandmud.org/blog/i-have-become-a-dame-blueEver since I read Karen Swallow Prior's biography on the life and work of Hannah More, I have longed to find a group of artistically-minded, research scholars to share work with and generate critical feedback of my writing and choreography. I sought a community interested in the good, true, and beautiful. I have finally run across just such a society of women and, as an added bonus, they invoke Hannah More and The Blue Stocking Society, an informal literary, social, and educational women's movement in the 18th century. As a writer of fiction, poetry, and theatre, Hannah More was a prolific writer and worker to promote education for children and even worked alongside William Wilberforce in the Abolition Movement. Full of small contributions, More became my inspiration to accumulate a life of meaning and purpose in art, an outcrop of my Christian faith, no matter the smallest of tasks.

]]><![CDATA[REpost: thoughts from Joel Pelsue]]>Wed, 05 Nov 2025 17:29:41 GMThttp://www.fireandmud.org/blog/repost-thoughts-from-joel-pelsueIt is important not to elevate an artists' work above others' work. Ultimately, art has incredible power to feed the soul; a very important part of being human. But, is the calling of an artist somehow more spiritual or have a supernatural ethos above other callings?

]]><![CDATA[Musings: Dimensions Variable - Gabrielle Lamb]]>Tue, 04 Nov 2025 20:36:49 GMThttp://www.fireandmud.org/blog/musings-dimensions-variable-gabrielle-lambIt’s always a pleasure for me to see new movers in new spaces. Such was the performance of Dimensions Variable, Gabrielle Lamb’s company, Pigeonwing Dance at the Moody Center For The Arts on October 9, 2025. For just a quick commentary about the Q&A session following the performance. I tend to think Q&A’s are ripe with opportunity to see how the audience and artists connected throughout the performance. As always, this audience had thoughtful questions to ask. One audience member asking about the planning, choreography, and improvisation processed in the gallery space with Tishan Hsu’s exhibit of “Bio Morphe”. The questioner marveled at how the improvisational segments timed perfectly with the music.
Dancers, in turn, marveled in response with delight at how serendipitous their movement production in real time seemed to respond to the movement and vice versa. While it is, indeed, one of the great delights of developing a dance piece inside improvisational scores, I would argue that it is not serendipitous. It is the nature of improvisation work; a result of the practice of improvisation and the lengthy efforts that dancers invest in training for sensitivity to movement, music, various environmental stimuli, and, most of all, internal response of their bodies for the work. I am not chastising these dancers for not realizing this, I’m simply noting this moment of epiphany and delight that they found these delicious moments within their project. Dance on, Lovelies, it was beautiful.

]]><![CDATA[The pride of Weakness]]>Thu, 16 Oct 2025 14:00:45 GMThttp://www.fireandmud.org/blog/the-pride-of-weakness"[There is an] idea that shame needs to be defeated by pride and self-love. When we're living in shame and embarrassment and when we try to turn that shame into a pride, either way, your still living under the slavery of what other people think of you, rather than in the true freedom that we have in Christ."

Alexa Cramer, Mama Bear Apologetics

]]><![CDATA[FieldNOTES: Untitled, a final dance for two]]>Mon, 15 Sep 2025 07:00:00 GMThttp://www.fireandmud.org/blog/fieldnotes-untitled-a-final-dance-for-twoUntitled
Choreography and Performance: Jessica Vokoun and Rachel Bruce Johnson
Music: John Osburn
Photos: Nathan Harmon

A duet exploring the motivations behind desire and failure, connection and disconnection. Unbeknownst to me, this work became the final dance work of my performance career. The piece was a rich experience, largely due to my dance partner and her commitment to a high degree of artistic process and her commitment to me as a close friend. I have strong and warm memories of moving with her and excitement each time we arrived in the studio to work. Though I was never able to garner enough feedback to feel satisfied in my own personal performance process, it remains one of the best experiences I had in my career with one of the most generous moving artists I came to know. The journey was wealthier than the product and the product, the dance, was pretty nice! A success in my book.

However, at the time, I did not feel as if I had personally come to a complete resolution within my performance of the piece. I was uncertain if the choreography lacked some unresolved element or if this dissolution was a part of the performance process. I think one of the reasons the duet did not feel finished to me was because I did not reach the stage where I was reconciling my performance choices with the choreography. Sometimes that changes a few details of the choreography but usually it is more about underscoring the intent with performance choices. These choices solidify the concept within the piece. For me, if I have the chance to really delve into the performance process it feels more complete. It may have just needed one more block in the build, one more piece in the puzzle. It is somewhat regretful to me that I was unable to get there and now it has been 6 years since that performance. I am not saying that it was not a good performance experience in many other ways. In fact, the cumulative ways in which the performance did feel satisfactory overrides this feeling of lack. But, nonetheless, it is something I still think about and wonder if there were a way to resurrect the work and continue exploring its themes. It may be ironic that the purported themes in the work actually came to fruition in real life. It was connection and disconnection, desire and failure through art, yet, in the wild. ~ RBJ

]]><![CDATA[PERIPHERY LOSSES]]>Sat, 02 Aug 2025 07:00:00 GMThttp://www.fireandmud.org/blog/periphery-losses3074075One of the hardest aspects of grief is the collateral damage of a significant loss. In addition to the person who died, some people lose cursory relationships such as mutual friends of your loved one, couple friends that don’t know how to move on with only you and not your spouse, the widow of the parent you lost, or even whole groups of, what I call, “club friends”. Acquaintances that you run into frequently simply because you have children in the same grade or always talk with before church, etc. Club friends often have no idea how to include you or check on you while you’re still sad. That’s normal, though shallow and, frankly, unhelpful in any real sense. These periphery losses can affect the way you grieve and whether the process is overall healthy. While this is simply a reflection of personal observations, it acknowledges the non-linear messiness of grief. This is not a way to stoke that embers of grief to keep it alive, as if to wallow in the pain and define oneself by sadness. It’s an acknowledgment; a virtual nod of authenticity, a lingering look, and a decided exhale before stepping on down the path, a warm glow of sunset on the back.

]]><![CDATA[To my boys, with love]]>Wed, 30 Apr 2025 15:07:13 GMThttp://www.fireandmud.org/blog/to-my-boys-with-love-mom

Some people assume in merely reading the title that Nancy Pearcey’s book, The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes, is determined to claim that ‘toxic masculinity’ does not exist and might suggest that we, as a society, need to roll back the progress in advancing women’s issues of empowerment in order to combat the charges.
This couldn’t be further from the truth. Before even opening the book, questions shot forth demanding to know what side the author was on. This fascinates and perplexes me because I don’t see any way to critique ideas before understanding them! How can a person properly critique a book they haven’t read? It seems you’ll scuttle your credibility before any dialogue is ever started.
The primary reason I picked up this book was because I have two sons who are clearly struggling to understand the world and attitudes toward and around them. This is the second time I have read the book and it hits deeper each time. Not only does the book trace the development of changing attitudes and ideas about masculinity through history, it corrects the view that Christianity feeds toxic masculinity and offers no hope to the conversation.

Pearcey clearly delineates the difference between what men know to be a Good Man and where and how the secular script derailed that definition into toxic masculinity. For the sake of my sons, who were created with intrinsically good masculine traits and gifts that the world needs, I needed a more robust way to dig into the conversation so that they would not be left feeling guilty and unmoored about the good they were created to be. Pearcey’s research is a great place to start.

I love you, boys. You need to know that you are complete in how God designed you, even as you journey into strength, goodness, and virtue.

Love, Mom

]]><![CDATA[A Prayer for the Ephesians]]>Wed, 12 Feb 2025 16:49:02 GMThttp://www.fireandmud.org/blog/a-prayer-for-the-ephesiansA Prayer for the Ephesians
14For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
20Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

PC: Nathan Harmon Photography, dancers: Rachel Bruce Johnson & Chelsea Pirtle

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