Shapeshifter
Shapeshifter Videos
The Selkie Story
Shapeshifter began as a re-telling of an ancient Celtic myth. In the story, a fisherman steals the seal skin of a selkie, a mythical creature who is part seal, part woman. Imprisoned on land, the selkie lives with the man for years, even having a child with him, all the while slowly fading away and endlessly trying to find her way back home. While not every song is a direct reference, the selkie myth became a focal point for our creative process. We found modern questions in the ancient archetype - how do we stay true to ourselves in a world defined by dominating and conformist systems? How do we close the gulf between who we are and who we pretend to be? What would it take to recover our wild souls and a sense of being at home in ourselves?
“How do you get your skin back? How do you survive and find a way to return to your wholeness? When was the first time you lost your skin, and what helped you find it again?”
A common element in all the selkie-folk tales, and perhaps the most important, is the fact that in order to shapeshift they had to cast off their sealskins. Within these magical skins lay the power to return to seal form, and therefore the sea.
If this sealskin was lost, or stolen, the creature was doomed to remain in human form until it could be recovered. Because of this, if disturbed while on shore, the selkie-folk would hastily snatch up their skins before rushing back to the safety of the sea (Source).
“At the heart of the Selkie story is the hope that, while our skin may be stolen, we can recover it, and we can learn how to stay free.”
We can understand the selkie story and its characters as a metaphors for the external world - systems that strip away our individuality, humanity, and rights - but it is perhaps most potent when understood as a mirror for the ways we’ve internalized those systems. What would it take to integrate the splinters of our orphaned shadows? Beyond condemnation, what can we do to heal the wounds beneath behaviors based in unconscious endorsement of oppressive systems and beliefs?
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