Sometimes I feel as if I am leading two lives. In one of them I am a reasonable woman in her thirties, a well-behaved taxpayer and - curiously enough - a criminal judge. In the other one I squeeze into medieval garb, spend nights on end role-playing (mainly pen & paper) and spin the strangest tales and poems. And since there is a small, separate world for each of my lives, half of my friends regard me as pretty conventional and the other half as somewhat crazy. I guess they both are right, in a way. In any case, my husband Rafael doesn't seem to mind, though he himself rather tends towards the crazy side - co-roleplayer, Capoeirista and computer game developer. Without him, this page would never have come to be, and my English lyrics would be even less bearable than they are now (every household needs a Canadian!). We both live in Schifferstadt, Germany, although we lost our hearts in Heidelberg and haven't found them yet.
My musical inclinations became obvious at an early age: while still on my mother's arm I could hold my part when singing the inevitable Christmas carols, and I could write music long before I could write the alphabet - although by now, both are completely illegible. For twelve years I took recorder lessons - out of pure spite, just to show those incredulous idiots that it was a real instrument after all. Later on I took lessons in piano, church organ and singing, though unforunately, due to a couple of moves, there was never much continuity to the training of my voice. All in all I can proudly claim to have had by far too much classical training for my own good – still, the guitar I screwed up all by myself, without the help of a teacher. The beginning of my 'career' as a songwriter was again marked by an act of spite. I had written a few poems for some unknown producer who was in search for lyrics, and when, after a year, nothing had happened, I decided I could do just as well by myself, thank you very much. Thus, I hacked together my first guitar song. It turned out to be neither my last song nor my last guitar. . .
Though today my job and my little daughter leave me little time for my music, I still write the occasional piece, and every few weeks I practise with Crystal in order to expand our repertoire. Oh, incidentally: My real name is Eva Johanna Van Daele-Hunt (née Wiest), and I love summer - - - fragrant grass, hot hazy days and starlit nights. But more even then all of these I love stories. I'll share a few. Please be nice to them.
Juliane Honisch, one of our many dear friends among the Filk Community, has found beautiful and very flattering words to describe Crystal & me in the Gafilk Program Book 2007. We are vain enough not to withhold them:
“The sun is burning down in the last evening splendour. The Summer Lady's strawberry hair shines in its rays. A reddish-golden hue comes over the world.
One would imagine her sitting among the roses. Two minds take up her head, two souls share the body, serious and serene and yet lively and full of creative spirit. Like water, words pour from her bardic self, crystal clear, pristine, sometimes sad, always full of meaning, never trite. Her voice rings out like a bell calling people in to listen. There, on the crossroads, words linger and explain the world. It is a world of light and shadow, telling of the fates of lovers and fighters on their many quests through fate – in the real world and beyond. Life is not fair, quests are not easy, battles are not always won. She sings of victory and defeat, of love and loss, of the dread of an inexplicable game, of the consequences of decisions, the pains of growing up to be what one never wished to be, grown-up.
She is a player, a gamer, a singer, a poet, liege lady of the reality on both sides of the mirror.
Among the roses she plays her many instruments with a dextrous hand. So talented. Wood and string have gathered around her like followers, knowing she will make them sound clear and give them purpose. She plainly is familiar with too many of them, almost putting other bards to shame. The box that houses the instruments has nothing of Pandora, is a collection of sound: guitar and piano, recorder and metallophone, bodhrán and glass harmonica – and whatever else comes in handy.
Sometimes, her dark prince joins in, Rafael, adding depth to what is deep already. He is a fighter and a dancer and a singer and a creator of games.
An then again her other soul surfaces and she is no longer among roses but faces the thorns of life to speak justice. She is a criminal judge, sits on the bench and confronts crime and ill-doing. She knows how to do that as well, deals out her judgement with the same sagacity that pervades her lyrics.
There in her heart, her two souls entwine and dance to the spirit of the counterpoint, reality and what is beyond it holding hands in a sometimes melancholy but always beautiful way. “