Quentin Bega's Blog

Letters from Quotidia 2024 Episode 5 ANZAC Day

Letters from Quotidia, 2024- Episode 5. This is an ANZAC Day Special, posted on 25 April, just 11 days after my April Letter. Most of us living in Western countries owe our rather comfortable lives to those who, for the past hundred years- and more- served in the armed forces, some making the ultimate sacrifice, others with life-altering mental and or physical injuries. Here in Quotidia, that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives, but where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary, I wish to commemorate those extraordinary people to whom we owe so much: our war veterans.

I’ll start with a 15-line poem by Australian poet, Vance Palmer, written in 1920. The Farmer Remembers the Somme, The first five lines, hurl us into the horrors of trench warfare on the Western Front; the middle five lines transport us to an Australian idyll; the concluding five lines are a journey in memory from the heaven of the Australian bush back to the hell of trench warfare. Will they never fade or-pass!/The-mud,-and-the-misty-figures-endlessly-coming/In file through the foul morass,/And the grey flood-water ripping the reeds and grass,/And the steel wings drumming./The hills are bright in the sun:/There’s nothing changed or marred in the well-known places;/When work for the day is done/There’s talk, and quiet laughter, and gleams of fun/On the old folks’ faces./I have returned to these:/The farm, and the kindly Bush, and the young calves lowing;/But all that my mind sees/Is a quaking bog in a mist – stark, snapped trees,/And the dark Somme flowing.//

Henry Lawson, Australia’s storyteller and bush poet wrote the poem Scots of the Riverina in 1917. In twenty lines of understated brilliance, the poem tells of the only son who runs away from the farm and is disowned by his father. He enlists and is killed in Flanders. John Schumann, who wrote the Australian Vietnam War classic I Was Only Nineteen, put music to the Lawson poem. The version I first heard was by another Australian folksinger, Fred Smith, who has written quality songs about Australia’s Afghanistan campaign. Here is my version of Scots of the Riverina, [insert song]

In my twenties, I played with a group in Wollongong called Seannachie. Our singer, Londoner, Tony Fitzgerald, was the first person I heard singing this song. Written by Ian Campbell, a Scottish-born folksinger, it was popular among the anti-nuclear Aldermaston protesters in the 1960s. Campbell was an influential force in music in his native Britain from the early sixties right up to his death in 2012. In Banter from the 1990s onwards, I took up the song and twinned it with the instrumental you hear at its end. You can hear the band and middle-aged me do this if you go to SoundCloud and enter Letters From Quotidia, Postcards Edition 7. But I’m re-recording this as an old man, now. In my 75^th year I can no longer dodge the label. To recreate the instrumental, I had to dust off- quite literally- my tenor banjo which I hadn’t played in a quarter of a century! So, it’s not exactly a virtuoso performance- not that it ever was- but it does the job, I hope. [insert song]

The Snowy River Men, written by Kevin Baker should be better known. Kevin had gone on a song-collecting journey to the Snowy Mountains. It must have been after he returned to Australia from Germany and Ireland (where he stayed with us for several memorable weeks in 1981 during the hunger strikes). When I returned to Australia in 1988, I re-established contact with him in Wollongong where he told me of his song collecting in the High Country and the letter written to Mrs Allen by Hal Archer. This is my version of his song. [insert song]

The final song of this ANZAC special post is Now I’m Easy. Written by Eric Bogle, it surveys the Australian bush with a more realistic and unsentimental eye than the idyllic middle lines of the opening poem. The narrator is an old cocky or farmer who is looking back on a long, hardscrabble life, which included droughts, fires, floods but also times of plenty. He experiences the deaths of his wife, who died in childbirth, and his two sons, who died in the World War Two camp from hell that was the Burma Railway. They were among the thousands of Australian prisoners of war, who, as Wikipedia states, “found themselves at the bottom of a social system that was harsh, punitive, fanatical, and often deadly. The living and working conditions on the Burma Railway were “horrific”, with maltreatment, sickness, and starvation. The Australian Government figures suggest that of the 330,000 people who worked on the line (including 250,000 Asian labourers and 61,000 Allied POWs) about 90,000 of the labourers and about 16,000 Allied prisoners died. For all the years Banter was a going concern, my brother-in-law Jim, fronted this song. You can hear his version if you go to SoundCloud and type in Letters From Quotidia Postcard 11. This is my version. [insert song]

About war, and so much else, Thomas Hardy got it right, “Had he and I but met/By some old ancient inn,/We should have sat us down to wet/Right many a nipperkin!// “But ranged as infantry,/And staring face to face,/I shot at him as he at me,/And killed him in his place./ He concludes his poem with his usual wry and idiosyncratic take on life, “Yes; quaint and curious war is!/You shoot a fellow down/You’d treat if met where any bar is,/Or help to half-a-crown.” Next month, on May 12, the normal posts resume. Take care until then.

Scots of the Riverina poem by Henry Lawson music by John Schumann

The boy cleared out to the city from his home at harvest time —
They were Scots of the Riverina, and to run from home was a crime.
The old man burned his letters, the first and last he burned,
And he scratched his name from the Bible when the old wife’s back was turned.

A year went past and another. There were calls from the firing-line;
They heard the boy had enlisted, but the old man made no sign.
His name must never be mentioned on the farm by Gundagai —
They were Scots of the Riverina with ever the kirk hard by.

The boy came home on his “final”, and the township’s bonfire burned.
His mother’s arms were about him; but the old man’s back was turned.
The daughters begged for pardon till the old man raised his hand —
A Scot of the Riverina who was hard to understand.

The boy was killed in Flanders, where the best and bravest die.
There were tears at the Grahame homestead and grief in Gundagai;
But the old man ploughed at daybreak and the old man ploughed till the mirk
There were furrows of pain in the orchard while his housefolk went to the kirk.

The hurricane lamp in the rafters dimly and dimly burned;
And the old man died at the table when the old wife’s back was turned.
Face down on his bare arms folded he sank with his wild grey hair
Outspread o’er the open Bible and a name re-written there.

The Old Man’s Tale/ Instrumental lyrics by Ian Campbell to an old tune

At the turning o’ the century I was a boy of five
Me father went to fight the Boers and never came back alive.
Me mother was left to bring us up, no charity she’d seek,
She washed &scrubbed&scraped along on seven&six a week

When I was twelve I left the school and went to find a job
Wi’ growin kids me Ma was glad o’ the extra couple o’ bob;
I knew that better schoolin’ would’ve stood me in good stead
ye can’t afford refinements when you’re strugglin’ for your bread.

And when the Great War came along I didn’t hesitate
I took the royal shilling and went off to do my bit,
I lived on mud and tears and blood, three years or thereabouts
Then copped some gas in Flanders and got invalided out.

When the war was over and we’d settled with the Hun,
We got back into civvies and we thought the fighting done,
We’d earned the right to live in peace but we didn’t have much luck,
For then we found we had to fight for the right to go to work

In ’26 the General Strike, it found me on the street,
For I’d a wife and kid to keep and their needs I had to meet,
A brave new world was coming and the brotherhood of man
But when the strike was over we were back where we began.

I struggled through the hard times, worked just now and again
I saw the blackshirts marching and the things they did in Spain;
I raised my children decent and I taught them wrong from right,
But Hitler was the lad who came and taught them how to fight.

My daughter writes me once a month, a cheerful little note
About their colour telly and the other things they’ve got.
She’s got a son, a likely lad; he’s nearly twenty-one
And she tells me now they’ve called him up to fight in Vietnam.

We’re living on the pension now, it doesn’t go too far
Not much to show for a life that seems like one long bloody war.
When you think of all the wasted lives it makes you want to cry
I’m not sure how to change things, but by Christ we’ll have to try.

The Snowy River Men words and music Kevin Baker

Dear Mrs Allen, I write to you today,

To say that I was with your son just before he passed away

I trained with him at Goulburn and we travelled on to France

And I was there when he got hit in the German advance.

It seems so long ago now since we marched into your town

and all the young men heard the call and signed their names straight down

and the girls and the children proudly cheered us all along

Ah, Bibbenluke that day was a feast of speech and song.

But the..CH1/CH2-5…And the Snowy River Men just couldn’t march today

There’s far too many of them dead for the rest to feel that way

The cold ground of Europe has been watered with their blood

There’s a strange new crop of crosses rising in this foreign mud

From Goulburn to Sydney then a ship from Circular Quay,

A spirit of adventure stood and filled both Les and me

It was great to be with comrades true and travelling abroad

For a while the war seemed far away, and the world was to be toured

In Durban, the natives took us travelling in style

In rickshaws that they pulled along at a shilling a mile

In Cape Town we watch the black boys diving in the bay

The Snowies had a good time there and would have liked to stay Chorus

When we landed at Plymouth, we’d spent eight weeks at sea

And entrained straight way for Wilton where our camp turned out to be

They treated us well there so we really can’t complain

That the sky was grey the weather bleak and it always seemed to rain

When we set sail for France the weather had turned fine

And it wasn’t long before the call to reinforce the line

Then a shell whined above us and we were raked with stones and mud

And I turned and saw Les sitting there in a pool of his own blood Chorus

He stared as the blood poured out of his legless thigh

And I carried him back to the aid post close nearby

His blood soaked my uniform, but he never breathed a sigh

And I had no idea then that he was going to die

When I left him he spoke of a pain inside his chest

I suppose that’s what killed him I just don’t know the rest

But I know that we all miss him and can’t help but wonder why

So many Snowy men so quickly had to die Chorus

We hear the king’s grateful for all the men who’ve died

And is sending home a photo of the graves in which they lie

Well I still think the cause is right but it’s not clear anymore

Why so many Australian men should die in Europe’s war

We hope with our hearts that time will ease the pain

Of never once to see his face or hear his voice again

But I’ve seen so much death now since that day on which he died

That I can’t now be the Snowy Man that once I was inside. Chorus

Now I’m Easy words and music by Eric Bogle

For nearly sixty years I’ve been a farmer,
Through drought, fire and flood I’ve lived through plenty,
But this country’s dust and mud, have seen My tears and blood,
And its nearly over now, and now I’m easy.

I married a fine young girl when I was twenty,
But she died in giving birth when she was thirty,
No flying doctors then, just a gentle old black gin,
And its nearly over now, and now I’m easy,

She left me with two sons and a daughter,
And a bone dry farm that cries for water,
Though my cares were rough and ready,
And they grew up fine and steady,
And its nearly over now, and now I’m easy.

My daughter married young and went her own way,
My sons lay buried by the Burma railway
In this land I’ve called my home, though I’ve carried on alone,
And its nearly over now, and now I’m easy.

City folks these days despise the farmer,
Saying with dole and subsidies we have it easy,
But there’s no drought or starving stock on your sewered suburban blocks.
And its nearly over now ,and now I’m easy

For nearly sixty years I’ve been a farmer,
Through drought, fire, and flood I’ve lived through plenty,
But this country’s dust and mud, have seen My tears and blood,
And its nearly over now, and now I’m easy.

Credits: All written text, song lyrics and music (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone-songs Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.

Letters from Quotidia 2024 Episode 4

Letters from Quotidia, 2024- Episode 4. I live in Quotidia and have done so for a considerable time, and indeed, I have a degree of control over what happens here. But I do not allow this to go to my head, having, over time, learned the lessons hubris teaches. Therefore, you don’t need a visa to enter Quotidia because Quotidia remains that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary.

Frozen water and steel comprise the elements of my first song. And to introduce it I wish to quote, in its entirety, Thomas Hardy’s magnificent poem, The Convergence of the Twain. In a solitude of the sea/Deep from human vanity,/And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.// Steel chambers, late the pyres/Of her salamandrine fires,/Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.//Over the mirrors meant/To glass the opulent/The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.//Jewels in joy designed/To ravish the sensuous mind/Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.//Dim moon-eyed fishes near/Gaze at the gilded gear/And query: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?” …/Well: while was fashioning/This creature of cleaving wing,/The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything/Prepared a sinister mate/For her — so gaily great —/A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.//And as the smart ship grew/In stature, grace, and hue,/In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.//Alien they seemed to be;/No mortal eye could see/The intimate welding of their later history,//Or sign that they were bent/By paths coincident/On being anon twin halves of one august event,//Till the Spinner of the Years/Said “Now!” And each one hears,/And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.// Subtitled Lines on the loss of the Titanic, it is a masterclass in poetic technique resonating in 11 stanzas of rhyming triplets with Hardy’s idiosyncratic and unique voice.

The overweening pride of Empire, glorying in contemporary industrial confidence about the future bending to human will, is the ironic underlay of the poem. Every time I read the opening tercet, In a solitude of the sea/Deep from human vanity,/And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.//I see the ghostly outline of the sunken ship developing as if in a photographic darkroom, when in 1985, the Argo, a Remote Operated Vehicle, showed the world the first images of the iconic liner since that fatal convergence 73 year previously.

This is my first original song written this year. I had wondered in the weeks before whether my creativity had, like the Titanic, sunk without a trace- umm, hubris maybe not entirely expunged from my soul! The title is based on the wry Belfast retort to those who taunt them about the Titanic disaster, She was all right when she left here!

As a teenager I would visit my girlfriend (later wife) where she lived in the docks area of Belfast. Her father, a noted traditional fiddler in Northern Ireland, worked for many years at Harland and Wolff, the firm who built the Titanic. He made her a doll’s house from scrap material there, and, of course, I worked this and myself into the bridge of the song. As I say, hubris not entirely expunged. So here is She Was Alright When She Left Our Town. [insert song]

They thought she was the perfect ship. What, I wonder, would a perfect person be like? Michelangelo’s David? Perhaps one of The Stepford Wives? Or what about the perfect society? Calvin’s Geneva where, according to Steven Hicks, acts of God such as floods or earthquakes were acts of Satan, Copernicus labelled a fraud, attendance at church and sermons were compulsory where Calvin himself preached at great length three or four times a week. Or would you prefer Pol Pot’s Cambodia after Year Zero where all culture and traditions within a society must be completely destroyed.

In yearning for perfection, like so many other things in life, it is wise to remember the admonition to be careful what you wish for. In Australia, to call any achievement or attainment pretty ordinary is, in fact, a comprehensive put-down. But what about the situation so many find themselves in where to achieve the merely ordinary would be a blessing, if not a miracle? It was in the mid-70s, living in Wollongong, that I read Thomas Shapcott’s poem, Near the school for handicapped children. It struck a chord then and that dissonant stack of notes has sounded again and again over the decades since, striking closer to home. This compelling poem gets it right: I am hurt by my wholeness, the poet says when he spots the disabled child whose freckled face reminds him of nephews and how his limbs remind me of how straight/is my own spine and that I take my fingers/for granted. Love blazes out in the simple line; he has been dressed carefully. When the lights change to green, the child skips across the road like a skimming tambourine/brittle with music, the telling simile with which the poem ends. For that skipping child, though, and for so many, the light, signalling the ordinary, will be stuck on red forever. I wrote this three years ago for my post Letters for Quotidia , episode 30. With my 10-year-old younger daughter in mind, I wrote the final song of this post back in 2001. It is called Perfect (as you can be) [insert song] The next Letter is in 11 days’ time on April 25^th-Anzac Day- which, in Australia and New Zealand, marks the disastrous Gallipoli campaign of 1915.

She Was Alright When She Left Our Town (Quentin Bega)

She was alright when she left our town the shipyard men reply

To those who mocked their labour and said they had missed the mark

When in April Nineteen Hundred and Twelve they bade their ship goodbye

Not knowing that their transatlantic gem would never reach New York

Thousands worked at Thompson’s dock to make this dream come real

Of architects and engineers for the famous White Star Line

They laboured six days a week to build the unsinkable keel

The future beckoned all aboard assured all it would be fine

An iceberg waited patiently across the rolling sea

As dancing drinking laughing men and women- oh so pretty-

The witching hour approached and declared it not at all to be

A journey that would reach its end in glittering New York City

Your father walked in through those gates many years of his working life

He made for you a doll’s house with the scrap found lying round

You laughed and cried, played children’s games in the shadow of the docks

Until with your daughter and this man in tow you left for Sydney bound

“She was alright when she left here” the Belfast men reply

To those who mocked their labour and said they had missed the mark

When in April Nineteen Hundred and Twelve they bade their ship goodbye

Not knowing that their transatlantic gem would never reach New York

That their transatlantic gem would never reach New York

Perfect (as you can be) (Quentin Bega)

Experts say you’re damaged goods, why, they cannot tell

Something happened somewhere else some time ago

And there’s nothing they can do, just accept the fact

And try to adapt to what is here

It’s all right you’re all right in my eyes

You’re just as perfect as you can be, as you can be

Some things are too hard for you, and I hate to see

Confusion in your eyes wet with tears

Some things you will never do others take for granted

And I cannot pretend, oh it hurts me too

It’s all right you’re all right in my eyes

You’re just as perfect as you can be, as you can be

I’m just thankful you are here just the way you are

I can’t imagine life without you near

Steps you make however small are greater in my mind

Than those steps up on the moon in sixty-nine

It’s all right you’re all right in my eyes

You’re just as perfect as you can be, as you can be

So why do experts say you’re damaged goods?

Letters from Quotidia 2024 Episode 3

Letters from Quotidia, 2024- Episode 3. You don’t need a visa to enter Quotidia because Quotidia remains that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary.

To mark St Patrick’s Day I wish to refer to three Rocky Roads. The first, a documentary made by Irish journalist, Peter Lennon, in 1968 which reported on his sad, emotionally frozen, culturally isolated homeland. In a Guardian article of 2005 Phillip French states, His thesis was that a revolution launched by poets and socialists had been hijacked by conservative politicians and a repressive church and the country diverted into the nostalgic celebration of old heroes. This argument appealed to the Irish young but was rejected by the Irish establishment and never shown outside Dublin or on TV.

The Ireland of the time was in the grip of an obscurantist, uncultivated church, according to short story writer Sean O’Faolain and Lennon’s friend in Paris, Samuel Beckett, warned him not to bother making the film because they aren't serious people. But he did and the documentary, Rocky Road to Dublin, was re-released to wide acclaim in an Ireland utterly changed in the intervening decades.

The second Rocky Road to which I will briefly but somewhat indulgently refer is a personal one. In September 1968 I moved to Belfast to attend College and in quick order over the next four years, whilst humming with a beer buzz, became involved in student politics, got engaged, became hospitalised with sarcoidosis, married, welcomed my elder daughter into the wildly rioting world, lived up the Whiterock Road during internment, and flew out to Australia with my wife and infant child to start a new life.

But the third Rocky Road is the main subject and my first song. The Rocky Road to Dublin features the common archetype of the young man who leaves home to make his mark on the world, driven by the desire to prove himself, overcoming obstacles to achieve greatness. Bilbo and Frodo Baggins from The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings come to mind. As do Harry Potter from the popular series by R K Rowling. For those more addicted to film than the written word, Luke Skywalker from the Star Wars franchise will be a shining example of the type. Let’s now follow the more comically mundane adventures of a young man as he makes his way from Galway to Dublin and then to Liverpool. [insert song]

But for every male adventurer who makes it large, there are a legion of those who miss the mark and end up like the ageing “Sport” described, with deep pathos, by African American poet, Langston Hughes, Life/For him/Must be/The shivering of/A great drum/Beaten with swift sticks/Then at the closing hour/The lights go out/And there is no music at all/ And death becomes/An empty cabaret/And eternity an unblown saxophone/And yesterday a glass of gin/Drunk long/Ago. Oh Lord, such succinctness is the mark of a great poet, don’t you think?

And that sad segue leads me to the second song of this post, If Wishes Were Fishes, by Eric Bogle. I first heard of him fifty years ago when I was attending a folk night in a farmhouse near the Hawkesbury River north-west of Sydney.Someone sang And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda, a song about the ANZACSin the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, Its music and lyrical scope stood head and shoulders above the other offerings on the night and when, later, I heard his song, No Man’s Land a.k.a. The Green Fields of France, I had goosebumps, such was the physical impact of that song on me.

And over the years, alone and with others, I have covered songs such as, Shelter, which celebrates Australia’s welcoming of migrants to its shores- but this was before the inhuman policies of the 2000s and later where refugees were turned back or incarcerated indefinitely in off-shore tropical island hellholes. Now I’m Easy a.k.a. The Cocky Farmer traces a farmer’s life and stoicism in the face of tragedies. My Youngest Son Came Home Today delineates the horrors of the troubles in Northern Ireland. But it’s with If Wishes Were Fishes that I choose to close this letter.

I identify with so many elements of the song that if I didn’t know for certain that Bogle wrote the thing, I would imagine that I had done so myself! And because I am tracking the advance of A. I.- and advancing it certainly is- I requested a poem about wishes from my Bing Co-pilot. This is what it came up with: I wish I could fly in the sky/And touch the clouds with my hands/I wish I could swim in the sea/And explore the depths with my eyes/I wish I could run in the fields/And feel the breeze on my face/I wish I could climb the mountains/And see the world from above/But most of all, I wish I could be/The person that you love//

You know, that’s not a bad effort for less than five seconds composition! I remain confident, but increasingly less so, that we still have a while to rule the roost as writers and musicians before we have to be content to compete among our lesser selves as, say, the Special Olympics competitors do in their own contests quarantined off from more able-bodied athletes. [insert song]

The next post drops on 14 April on which day the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg just before midnight; President Lincoln was assassinated and, on a more personal and joyous note, my younger daughter was born. Until then, keep safe, be happy, and perform a little act of kindness every day to make a difference to someone.

The Rocky Road to Dublin (slip jig/ words by D K Gavan 19^th Century Galway poet)

In the merry month of June, now from me home, I started
Left the girls of Tuam were nearly broken-hearted
Saluted father dear, kissed me darling mother
Drank a pint of beer, me grief and tears to smother
Then off to reap the corn, and leave where I was born
Cut a stout, black thorn to banish ghosts and goblins
A brand-new pair of brogues to rattle over the bogs
And frighten all the dogs on the rocky road to Dublin

One, two, three, four, five
Hunt the hare, and turn her down the rocky road
And all the ways to Dublin, whack-fol lolly-rah

In Mullingar that night, I rested limbs so weary
Started by daylight, next morning blithe and early
Took a drop of the pure to keep me heart from shrinking
That’s the Paddy’s cure when’er he’s on for drinking
To see the lassies smile, laughing all the while
At me curious style, ‘twould set your heart a-bubblin’
They asked me was I hired, and wages I required till I
Was nearly tired of the rocky road to Dublin

(Chorus)

In Dublin next arrived, I thought it such a pity
To be so soon deprived a view of that fine city
So then I took a stroll, all among the quality
Bundle it was stole, in a neat locality
Something crossed me mind, when I looked behind
No bundle could I find upon me stick a-wobblin’
‘Quiring for the rogue, said me Connaught brogue
It wasn’t much in vogue on the rocky road to Dublin

Chorus)

From there I got away, me spirits never falling
Landed on the quay, just as the ship was sailing
Captain at me roared, said that no room had he
When I jumped aboard, a cabin found for Paddy
Down among the pigs, did some hearty rigs
I played some hearty jigs, the water round me bubbling
When off Holy head I wished meself was dead
Or better far instead on the rocky road to Dublin

(Chorus)

The boys of Liverpool, when we safely landed
Called meself a fool, I could no longer stand it
Blood began to boil, temper I was losing
Poor old Erin’s Isle they began abusing
“Hurrah me soul” says I, me Shillelagh I let fly
Galway’s boys were by and saw I was a hobblin’
With a loud “hurray” they joined in the affray
Quickly cleared the way for the rocky road to Dublin

(Chorus)

If Wishes Were Fishes (Eric Bogle)

I wish I was home again, at home in my heart again.

It’s been a long time since my heart talked to me.

Wastin’ my precious days wishin’ my life away.

If wishes were fishes, we’d all cast nets in the sea.

And I wish I was young again, my song still to be sung again.

The sweet tunes of my life have gone sour and off key.

Writin’ my tired old rhymes, tryin’ to turn back time.

If wishes were fishes, we’d all cast nets in the sea.

If wishes were fishes, I know where I’d be:

Casting my net in the dark rolling sea.

And if my net’s empty when it comes back to shore,

I’ll throw it away and go fishing no more.

I wish I could care again, reach out and share again,

Mend what’s been broken and let it run free.

The older I get, it seems, the more wishin’ takes the place of dreams.

If wishes were fishes, we’d all cast nets in the sea.

If wishes were fishes, I know where I’d be:

Casting my net in the dark rolling sea.

And if my net’s empty when it comes back to shore,

I’ll throw it away and go fishing no more.

I wish I was home again, at home in my heart again.

It’s been a long time since my heart talked to me.

Wastin’ my precious days, wishin’ my life away.

If wishes were fishes, we’d all cast nets in the sea.

Letters from Quotidia 2024 Episode 2

Letters from Quotidia, 2024- Episode 2. Welcome back those who visited Quotidia between 2021 through 2023. And to new visitors- welcome! You don’t need a visa to enter Quotidia. Stay as long as you like. Quotidia remains that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary.

Just a few weeks ago, I encountered another instance of the extraordinary: I was snared by an old photograph which took my breath away. It had been sent out from Ireland from my wife’s older brother who found it while he was clearing out a cupboard at his home in Belfast. My daughter then brought it back from Brisbane where she was visiting her cousins from overseas who were attending a wedding there. The black-and-white photograph shows my wife with three friends in 1964 when she was just 15 years of age.

They were on holidays during the month of July and staying at a rental property in the village of Waterfoot in the heart of the Glens of Antrim. I had first laid eyes on her at a place in Cushendall frequented by holidaying teens from Belfast and Scotland called Hamill’s Café which had a jukebox which eagerly consumed our coins, spilling out the sounds of the sixties: And what sounds they were!

The first song featured in this post is one I first heard at that teenage haunt, The Animals’ version of The House of the Rising Sun. It’s a phenomenal song: transformative for Dylan- some say, it prompted him to go electric. Now, Dylan had covered this song earlier in 1961, and musical magpie that he is, had stolen Dave Van Ronk’s arrangement which Alan Price then lifted in his arrangement for The Animals whose version knocked The Beatles off the top of the charts and broke the Newcastle group internationally. The Beatles, class act that they were and always would be, sent The Animals a congratulatory telegram.

Of uncertain provenance, this folk song was probably written towards the end of the 19^th Century but may be contemporaneous with the American Civil War. Miners were singing it by the turn of the 20^th Century, and it’s been covered by many artists including Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, Nina Simone, and Joan Baez. But that photograph sticks in my mind, and I wonder if the ephemeral images flooding social media and gulped down in their tens of millions every day have anything like the emotional force imparted by that 60-year-old black and white photograph? Old man shouting at clouds again, eh?

Here is my version of The House of the Rising Sun– I record it in 4/4 time rather than the 6/8 time used by The Animals. I retain the folk-rock vibe that The Animals used to rocket the song to the top of record charts all over the world. [insert song]

In 1975 I bought an album by The Dubliners-entitled Now. It is one of their strongest releases, featuring John Sheahan, Barney McKenna, Luke Kelly and newcomer, Jim McCann, who joined the group after Ciaran Bourke and Ronnie Drew left in 1974. Songs of note include Carrickfergus which McCann made his own from that time on; Luke Kelly’s masterful rendition of The Unquiet Grave, one of the oldest English folk songs; The Old Triangle, brought to prominence by legendary playwright Brendan Behan; and final song of this podcast, The Lord of the Dance.

It was written by Sydney Carter, a formidable presence in the English folk scene for many decades. According to the obituary in The Guardian of 17 March 2004 Lord of the Dance was written in 1963, as an adaptation of the Shaker hymn Simple Gifts. Later, he said that he saw Christ as the incarnation of the piper who is calling us. He dances that shape and pattern which is at the heart of our reality. Lines of verse he wrote more than 30 years before his death magnify this theme, Coming and going by the dance, I see/That what I am not a part of me./ Dancing is all that I can ever trust,/ The dance is all I am, the rest is dust./I will believe my bones and live by what/ Will go on dancing when my bones are not.//

Many artists- and indeed religions- have used dance as a metaphor. I postulate that our very essence, atoms, dance in and around and through us unceasingly and while our bodies degrade over time, the multitudinous atoms keep dancing in our minds in some sort of quantum engagement that generates consciousness and connection with a wider reality.

John Sheahan, who at the time of writing is the only surviving member of the original Dubliners, aged 85, has this to say about how compositions come about when interviewed by The Irish Times on the occasion of his 80^th birthday, My theory is that when a composer says ‘I’m after writing a new tune,’ well, God knew that tune from eternity, so he’s just after discovering the tune, not writing it, really. I see myself as having been lucky to be in the right place at the right time when a little gem falls out of God’s pocket. As lines from his poem, Signature would modestly have it, When day is done, and evening firelight beckons/When tradesmen all are free from toil and care/I linger in the shadows with my fiddle/And softly leave my signature in air// Yeah, linger in the shadows, I’m pretty confident there is a song or poem somewhere in that phrase. Here’s The Lord of the Dance. [insert song]

The next podcast will dance (or stagger?) your way on or about St Patrick’s Day. It will be the middle of March and whether there will be any madness about is something to contemplate as the world unravels around us, mmm?

The House of the Rising Sun (trad)

There is a house in New Orleans they call the Rising Sun
And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy and God, I know I’m one

My mother was a tailor she sewed my new blue jeans
My father was a gamblin’ man down in New Orleans

Now the only thing a gambler needs is a suitcase and a trunk
And the only time he’ll be satisfied is when he’s on a drunk

Oh, mother, tell your children not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery in the House of the Rising Sun

Well, I got one foot on the platform the other foot on the train
I’m goin’ back to New Orleans to wear that ball and chain

Well, there is a house in New Orleans they call the Rising Sun
And it’s been the ruin of many a poor boy and God, I know I’m one

Lord of the Dance (Sydney Carter)

I danced in the morning when the world was begun,
And I danced in the moon and the stars and the sun,
And I came down from heaven and I danced on the earth:
At Bethlehem I had my birth.

Dance, then, wherever you may be,
I am the Lord of the dance, said he,
And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be,
And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.

I danced for the scribe and the Pharisee,
But they would not dance and they wouldn’t follow me;
I danced for the fishermen, for James and John;
They came with me and the dance went on:

(Chorus)

I danced on the Sabbath and I cured the lame:
The holy people said it was a shame.
They whipped and they stripped and they hung me on high,
And they left me there on a cross to die:

(Chorus)

I danced on a Friday when the sky turned black;
It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back.
They buried my body and they thought I’d gone;
But I am the dance, and I still go on:

(Chorus)

They cut me down and I leapt up high;
I am the life that’ll never, never die.
I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me:
I am the Lord of the dance, said he.

(Chorus x2)

Credits: All written text, song lyrics and music (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone-songs Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.

Letters from Quotidia 2024 Episode 1

Letters from Quotidia, 2024- Episode 1. Quentin Bega welcomes back those who listened to some or all of the previous Letters. And to any new listeners- glad you are visiting Quotidia. The Letters launched on January 11th, 2021, as a pandemic project culminating on 31st December 2023 having chalked up a total of 266 posts. From the fevered throes of podcast freneticism, which at one stage saw five posts in a week, the stream abated to one or two a fortnight in the latter stages of the project. Now, there will be one a month, Deo volente. And maybe this just reflects the fact that the phenomenon of the podcast, like goblin mode and sourdough baking is a fading relic of a time humanity would rather forget and move on from at a quick march! thank you very much! But here in Quotidia the same dispensation obtains as before. This is, then: a podcast for lovers of music, poetry, and the Crack- that most Irish of nouns which may encompass, news, gossip, fun, entertainment, and enjoyable conversation. Quotidia remains that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary. I extracted from that treasure trove that is Wikipedia a rather extraordinary piece of information recently. That most august of American newspapers, The New York Times opined as follows in an obituary of 1890: "the most conspicuous English dramatist of the 19th century. Who could that possibly be? Any guesses? So, if I were to drop the name Dionysius Lardner Boucicault, would your eyes light up in rueful recognition? I’m guessing, probably not. It just goes to show the evanescence of fame because, Dion Boucicault as he is more familiarly known, was born 26 December 1820, and died 18 September 1890. He was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the English-speaking theatre. I was vaguely aware of him when I was studying Irish literature of the 19th Century back in the early 1970s, but it was only when I was researching the background to the first song to be featured this year that I became better acquainted with this rather colourful character. The song, a drinking ditty recorded by the Clancys in the early ‘60s, is called The Cruiskeen Lawn. The translation of the chorus is, Oh! My heart’s love is my little jug, my little jug/Bright health to my darling/ My heart’s love is my little full jug, full, full, full/Oh my heart’s love is my little full jug. So, without more ado, here is my version of The Cruiskeen Lawn. [insert song] I shamelessly added a verse of my own to bulk it out! And I like the title, too, as it reminds me of that wonderful Dublin writer, Flann O’Brien whom I have read with pleasure for decades. He had a long-running satirical column in The Irish Times called The Cruiskeen Lawn. His short-form prose work as well as longer forms such as the novel will repay perusal, IMHO. He was fond of a jar or two, as is the composer of the next verse extract on the subject, Seamus Heaney. He translated an Irish poem and folk song, An Bonnan Bui or The Yellow Bittern by Cathal Bui Mac Giolla Ghunna. To hear it sung in Irish, go to YouTube and listen to Dianne Cannon’s wonderful unaccompanied version. Here, now, is the final verse in English, The woman I love says to give it up now/Or else I’ll go to an early grave,/But I say no and keep resisting/For taking drink’s what prolongs your days./You saw for yourself a while ago/What happened to the bird when its throat went dry;/So my friends and neighbours, let it flow:/You’ll be stood no rounds in eternity.// Now, isn’t that the truth! The final song of this inaugural post for 2024 is another popularised by the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, The Cobbler. It featured in their songbook which I bought in the late 1960s as I was learning guitar- still learning. I’ve sung various songs from their repertoire in venues in Ireland and Australia, but never this one- another one of life’s little mysteries because do I rate it highly! Tommy Makem’s mother, Sarah Makem, a reputed folk artist herself, is credited with bringing this 18th Century song to wider notice. The persona is an itinerant cobbler; a maker of footwear, who carries his tools with him from place to place. He has a chequered past, having spent time in prison or oul’ camp, as he puts it in verse one. And while he says he’s resolved to repent; I have my doubts. There was widespread agitation in 18th Century Ireland for rights of various kinds and the cobbler may well seek to keep his affinity for reform under wraps given the harshness of the penal system. He is, however, sanguine in the face of life’s vicissitudes as outlined in verses two and three while verses four and five focus on his domestic life where marital strife is addressed by means of a river. Here is my version of The Cobbler: [insert song] I hope you have enjoyed your brief sojourn in Quotidia. I plan to lob another podcast your way in about a month’s time- although I am mindful of the admonition, If you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans! And since AI seems to be taking over the world, here is an excerpt of verse created by my soon-to-be master, if pundits are to be believed: He works all day with leather and nails/Fixing the shoes of those who walk the trails…/He finds his joy in his whiskey and his rhyme/He is a cobbler and he is content with his time.//CUL8R

The Cruiskeen Lawn (Dion Boucicault)

Oh! Gra-ma-chree ma-cruiskeen,
Slainte geal mavoorneen
Gra-machree ma-cruiskeen lawn, lawn, lawn
Oh! Gra-ma-chree ma-cruiskeen lawn

Let the farmer praise his grounds,
Let the huntsman praise his hounds,
And the shepherd his dewey scented lawn;
Oh but I, more wise than they,
Will be happy night and day
With me darlin’ little cruiskeen lawn, lawn, lawn
Me smilin’ little cruiskeen lawn.

CHORUS

The Belgians love their beer

Strong ale the English cheer

The French of red wine oft will drink their fill

But I will set me watch

By a whiskey small keg batch

Sourced from some old hidden Irish still to fill

Me smilin’ little cruiskeen lawn(My immodest interpolation)

CHORUS

Immortal and divine,
Great Bacchus, god of wine
Create me by adoption your own son.
In the hopes that you’ll comply,
That my glass shall ne’er run dry
Oh my smilin’ little cruiskeen lawn, lawn, lawn
My smilin’ little cruiskeen lawn.

CHORUS

And when grim Death appears,
In a few but happy years,
He’ll say “Oh won’t you come along with me”
I’ll say, “Begone, you knave!”
For great Bacchus gave me leave
To take another cruiskeen lawn, lawn, lawn
To take another cruiskeen lawn

CHORUS

Then fill your glasses high

Let’s not part with lips so dry

For the lark now proclaims it is the dawn

And since we can’t remain

May we shortly meet again

To fill another cruiscín lán, lán, lán

To fill another cruiscín lán

CHORUS

The Cobbler (Trad/Sarah Makem)

Oh, me name is Dick Darby, I’m a cobbler
I served me time at oul’ camp
some call me an oul’ agitator
but now I’m resolved to repent

with me ing-twing of an ing-thing of an I-doe
with me ing-twing of an ing-thing of an I-day
with me roo-boo-boo roo-boo-boo randy
and me lab stone keeps beating away

Now, me father was hung for sheep stealing
me mother was burned for a witch
me sister’s a dandy house keeper
and I’m a mechanical switch

Chorus

It’s forty long years I have travelled
all by the contents of me pack
me hammers, me awls and me pinchers
I carry them all on me back

Chorus

Oh, me wife she is humpy, she’s lumpy
me wife she’s the devil, she’s cracked
and no matter what I may do with her
her tongue, it goes clickety-clack

Chorus

It was early one fine summer’s morning
a little before it was day
I dipped her three times in the river
and carelessly bade her goodbye. (Final Chorus)

Credits: All written text, song lyrics andmusic (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone-songs Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.

Letters from Radio Quotidia NYE2023

Welcome to Letters from Radio Quotidia the NYE2023 program where, on New Year’s Eve, we look back at the things that, at times, we wish weren’t and forwards to what we wish might be. I opened calendar year 2023’s account back in early January with Route 66 written by U.S. Marine Bobby Troupe in 1946- which I first heard in 1964 off the Rolling Stones’ first LP. I followed this with a tribute to the late Christine McVie by covering a song I heard her sing in 1970- I’d Rather Go Blind.

The month of October I dedicated to the Blues– but more of that later. February saw me paying homage to the Old West of America and March found me acknowledging my debt to my forbears in a rollicking rendition, The Ballad of Ian Chell which I freely confess owes more to imagination than to certified facts! April was consumed, in part, by anxiety over the potential dangers of Artificial Intelligence and I resorted to consoling writings of one sort or another. I discussed the parable of the wheat and the tares found in the Gospel of Matthew, but I did wonder if, in a future ruled by superintelligent computers, we would, at the end of the season, be gathered into an hospitable barn like the wheat or, like the tares, be swept up and burned in a raging fire.

The first song of this podcast, Along the Shore borrows from the well-known poem Footprints in the Sand written by 14-year-old Mary Stevenson in 1936 and, also, a contemporary parable by American Loren Eiseley whose writings combined scientific enquiry with literary sensibility. The story features a child throwing a starfish back to the waves. A sceptical adult asks, Why Bother? There are thousands of these creatures, and you can’t possibly make any real difference. The child picks up another starfish and throws it back to the sea, I made a difference for that one! Here, then, is my song, Along the Shore which seems a fitting way of opening the account for this New Years’ Eve celebration. [insert song]

In May, I devoted podcast 11 to my involvement with Irish music and musicians. I had collaborated for years with Mark Dougherty, a fine musical arranger and composer, until his unexpected death in a Belfast hospital on Christmas Day 2020. In April and May our collaboration, The Paper Suite, a jazz composition written in the mid-1980s featured in six of the podcasts. I also paid tribute to Irish folk music which has been a part of my life since I listened to the LP my parents purchased of The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem’s Hearty and Hellish!

Recorded live at the Gate of Horn nightclub in Chicago in November 1961 and released the next year, this may well have kickstarted my love of Irish folk music. One of the songs on that LP was Whiskey You’re the Devil which I am recording here for the first time, a mere sixty-two years after the boyos regaled the patrons at the Gate of Horn, in the windy city. However, I must confess that it is far from the first time I have had reason to echo that line of the chorus which goes, Whiskey you’re the devil you’re leading me astray! So, sing along, if you are in the mood, on this day which almost requires a spirituous libation of some sort! [insert song]

June, in the topsy turvy land of Quotidia, is the first month of winter and I selected, Remember, by Christina Rossetti written in 1849. Oh, the 19-year-old poet hooked my soul with that poignant poem. As I read her wonderful sonnet, I picked up my guitar and started to strum in a stately bluegrass waltz time and within a few minutes I had the template for the song – chiefly because that amazing 19-year-old poet supplied me with the lyrics! Readers of Christina Rossetti’s verse will note that I have used her words virtually unaltered. Throughout the three years of Letters from Quotidia I have valued poetry of all kinds, referencing, literally, hundreds of poems. And, as Emily Dickinson observed, and I concur with this observation- poetry is when she feels physically as if the top of my head were taken off. I must say that I have always been attracted to Carl Sandburg’s mischievous definition- one of 38 he offers- and the antepenultimate definition is quoted here: Poetry is the achievement of the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits. [insert song]

In August, towards the end of winter in Quotidia, which is mild by day and pleasantly cool by night, I wrote about a supernatural near-miss at a church fete, where two young girls escape the clutches of evil- but it is too recent to reprise here. I elected instead to find another song about such matters to record and found The House Carpenter, a traditional folk song that… delves deep into the complexities of love and the consequences of betrayal. It showcases the internal struggle the protagonist faces as she weighs her love for her family against her desires for freedom and passion.

My thanks to Amanda Phelps writing in the Old-Time Music site for this interpretation. The song has been covered by artists such as Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, and Pentangle. British and Irish versions tend to favour The Demon Lover as the title of choice for this song, whereas American versions generally favour The House Carpenter. In the denouement, the young mother sees the high hills of heaven but is told that they are not for you and I, by her lover. Whereupon her gaze is drawn to hills that are so dark and low and she learns that these are the hills of hell, my love, where you and I must go. [insert song]

Springtime in Quotidia, like everywhere else is the season of promises- of good things to come, of regrowth and memories of homemaking. So, September’s offerings included Scarlet Ribbons and The Green Glens of Antrim. In October, I revisited my lifelong love of The Blues, recording 10 classic songs, and immodestly, added one of my own. In November, Last Things was the theme. December is the first week of summer in Quotidia and while the northern hemisphere battens down for winter, here sunscreen, surfing and wildfire precautions feature even as holiday preparations proceed.

Let me conclude this NYE podcast with a couple of songs. I’ll reach back to December 2022 for the first of these, The Shoals of Herring written by Ewan McColl, one of the most gifted songwriters and performers to have graced the British Isles. I had the pleasure to watch him perform with his wife Peggy Seeger at Wollongong town hall in the mid-1970s. The Dubliners with Luke Kelly on vocals recorded, in my opinion, the best version of this great ballad about those hardy fishermen of the 1950s. McColl said, I recorded all the old fishermen up and down the east coast of Britain and knit together their words with rhymes of mine to produce a true song of the people. Here’s my version, [insert song]

To conclude 2023’s podcast, I present one of my shortest songs, clocking in at two minutes twenty seconds. I wrote this back in late 1982 at the end of a trying week and a trying term when I was bogged down at work and my wife was home wrangling three kids, two at primary school and a toddler underfoot with a washing machine on the bung and clothes that needed washing piling up. And, of course, the car needed either the last rites or a mechanic we couldn’t afford. Today in Quotidia the pain of the rising costs of living, especially on couples with kids as we were 40 years ago, resonates. In several past posts I have dissed AI in its attempts at poetry but as I was searching for an appropriate poem by a human person, my Bing AI offered the following lines:

Goodbye to the old year,/The time has come to part./We’ll miss the memories we shared,/And the love that filled our hearts.//We’ll say goodbye to laughter,/And the tears we shed in pain./We’ll say goodbye to all the moments,/That we’ll never see again.//But as we say goodbye to the old/,We welcome in the new./We’ll make new memories and new friends,/And start our lives anew.//So let’s raise a glass to the old year,/And all that it has brought./And let’s welcome in the new year,/With hope and love and thought.//

Mm, I’m impressed, and experiencing a tingle of apprehension, too! So, before Artificial Intelligence usurps my role as a journeyman songwriter, let me conclude with this song to my wife which I wrote over 40 years ago. It’s entitled, Just for You and Me. [insert song]

Technical Stuff: Microphone- Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.

Letters from Radio Quotidia Lost and Found 5

Welcome to Radio Quotidia, episode 15. This month’s theme Lost and Found, 12 minutes or so of music and musings. Quentin Bega here at the mic. I’m broadcasting from our studio in the depths of Quotidia inside a digital onion. My aim to keep you entertained for a while.

The first half of our married life saw an average of a move every eighteen months, one being in a caravan in a backyard. The second half has been somewhat different with a reasonably contented life in a small bungalow in the outer west of Sydney since 1995. I wrote the first song heard on this episode in February of that year. I was in the second year of a horrendous commute to work which was longer than the teaching day, starting and ending in the dark. I needed something to assuage the mid-life blues.

Best I could come up with was this song, the chorus of which references a Ron Cobb cartoon depicting an old man in a rocking chair set out on the nature strip with the trash for collection- a withered Christmas tree by his side. Ron Cobb, was a cartoonist, born in LA but who spent most of his life in Sydney. In my own private pantheon, which is populated with poets, composers, painters, dramatists, novelists, sculptors, and ordinary people, I include cartoonists – they have lightened, and, indeed, enlightened, my existence from the time when I was a kid reading MAD magazine in Aruba to today as I laugh at the evisceration by cartoonists’ sharpened pens of their myriad buffoonish targets infesting politics, the media and business.

Another Cobb cartoon which has stayed with me is one that exemplifies MAD- Mutual Assured Destruction- Cobb was preoccupied with the thought that the Dr Strangeloves of the world would miscalculate badly and reduce us all to glowing nuclear ash. His cartoon has two men cowering under a broken concrete shelter surrounded by rubble and skulls. One man says to the other, There’s a rumour goin’ round that we won. My song, No Surrender, is not the obdurate snarl of the ideologue or religious bigot, but rather the refusal of the ordinary man or woman to be beaten down by life’s vicissitudes. [insert song]

There are really only two ways, it seems to me, in which we can think about our existence here on Earth. We either agree with Macbeth that life is nothing more than a ‘tale told by an idiot,’ a purposeless emergence of life-forms including the clever, greedy, selfish, and unfortunate species that we call homo sapiens – the ‘evolutionary goof.’ Or we believe that, as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it, ‘There is something afoot in the universe, something that looks like gestation and birth.’ In other words, a plan, a purpose to it all. So writes Jane Goodall in her book, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey published in 1999.

I really like that phrase that defines us: the evolutionary goof and see no reason not to accept this characterisation along with de Chardin’s idea of the universe giving birth to something meaningful. I suppose this grows out of my own experience of life and self. I am a bit of a goof- defined variously as a bozo, fathead, goose, mooncalf, nitwit, or simpleton. A rather aimless, gormless stumblebum right out of a P. G. Wodehouse story.

After I retired from teaching, I wrote a blog between 27 April 2015 and 14 June 2016 called The Summa Quotidia comprising 120 songs with accompanying mini-essays. I also recorded a similar number of songs and instrumentals I had performed with the folk group Banter. These I transformed into a pandemic project entitled Letters From Quotidia, in various iterations, from January 2021 to December 2023. I’ll finish with the song I composed for episode 120 of the Letters, Love Everlasting Complete. [insert song]

Letters from Radio Quotidia Lost and Found 4

Welcome to Radio Quotidia, episode 14. This month’s theme Lost and Found, 13 minutes or so of music and musings. Quentin Bega here at the mic. I’m broadcasting from our studio in the depths of Quotidia inside a digital onion. My aim to keep you entertained for a while.

On Easter Saturday last year, I was alone in my room, staring at my computer where the cursor was blinking on the blank page in front of me. Hoping for inspiration and it finally arrived as just one word. Meanwhile. That was it. Just that one word. I was able to pull together lyrics to a chord sequence I had already written. I reflected on the fact that we (and I do include myself here) are fickle consumers of news in the West.

Was Ukraine the only instance of horror operating in the world? Of course not. Horror manifests its depredations elsewhere today, from Myanmar to Yemen to sub-Saharan Africa to Latin America, to the Middle East. And horror does not neglect the quotidian world either as it drills down into the cosy and supposedly safe domain of the domestic realm to spread misery. I read and collect poems from the site Poem-a-Day.

One of these, by Palestinian poet, Mosab Abu Toha, stopped me in my tracks, because the decades-long agony of his people has not yet been resolved but was driven from my mind by the foregrounding of what was happening in eastern Europe. Mosab Abu Toha is the founder of the Edward Said Library, Gaza’s only English-language library. Here is his poem, Mouth Still Open, Someone’s mouth is still open. He hadn’t finished yawning when shrapnel pierced through his chest, stung his heart. No wind could stop the flying pieces of shrapnel. Even the sparrow on the lemon tree nearby wondered how they could move with no wings.

The song I have written for this episode is focused on what is happening from the TV coverage of events in Ukraine. 21 months on from the writing of the song and what has changed? Here is Meanwhile, still, alas, relevant. [insert song]

The Parting Glass is a traditional song, often sung at the end of a gathering of friends. It has long been sung in Ireland, enjoying considerable popularity to this day. The earliest known printed version was as a Scottish broadside in the 1770s. However, it was known at least as early as 1605 as a poem- Armstrong’s Goodnight, by one of the Border Reivers executed that year for the murder in 1600 of Sir John Carmichael.

The overlay of mortal sadness, of one facing execution, has seeped into the melody. and I am reminded of that amazing poem by the 24-year-old Chidiock Tichbourne who was executed by being hung, drawn, and quartered for his role in the Catholic Babington plot to assassinate Elizabeth I in 1586. He sent this moving examination of life and death to his wife on the night before his execution:

My prime of youth is but a froste of cares,/My feaste of joy, is but a dishe of payne,/My cropp of corne, is but a field of tares:/And all my good is but vaine hope of gaine:/The daye is gone, and yet I sawe no sonn:/And nowe I live, and nowe my life is donn.//The springe is past, and yet it hath not sprong/The frute is deade, and yet the leaves are greene/My youth is gone, and yet I am but Yonge/I sawe the woorld, and yet I was not seene/My threed is cutt, and yet it was not sponn/And nowe I lyve, and nowe my life is donn.//I saught my death, and founde it in my wombe/I lookte for life, and sawe it was a shade./I trode the earth and knewe it was my Tombe/And nowe I die, and nowe I am but made/The glasse is full, and nowe the glass is run/And nowe I live, and nowe my life is donn. [insert song] Next week, our final Radio Quotidia program of the year, will feature two songs that are rather more up-lifting than today’s offerings, more in keeping with the festive season! [insert song]

Credits: All written text, song lyrics and music (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone- Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.

Letters from Radio Quotidia Lost and Found 3

Welcome to Radio Quotidia, episode 13. This month’s theme Lost and Found, 13 minutes or so of music and musings. Quentin Bega here at the mic. I’m broadcasting from our studio in the depths of Quotidia inside a digital onion. My aim to keep you entertained for a while.

In 1965, a 24-year-old Robert Hunter was writing lyrics for a San Francisco band called The Grateful Dead. His worked mainly with Jerry Garcia over a forty-year period until Garcia’s death in 1995. In 1962, he volunteered for psychedelic chemical experiments at Stanford University, research covertly sponsored by the CIA in its MKULTRA program: other participants included Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Allen Ginsberg beat poet best known for Howl.

Hunter was paid to take LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline, and then report on his experiences, which were creatively formative for him. His lyrics underpinned some of the Dead’s best-known songs. To prepare for the song at the start of this episode, here is a lovely short poem about the moon by imagist poet T.E. Hulme, who was killed in action during World War One on 28th September 1917:

Above the quiet dock in mid night/Tangled in the tall mast’s corded height/Hangs the moon/What seemed so far away/Is but a child’s balloon forgotten after play.

Most men and women who have been to outer space attest to the perspective distance gives and how fragile yet magnificent our blue earth appears from afar. Standing on the Moon, then, gives a wide perspective on life that the other song featured in this episode will fill out in its own unique fashion. [insert song]

Time and mortality were themes Roman poet Horace explored in Ode seven of the fourth book, The swift hour and the brief prime of the year/Say to the soul, Thou wast not born for aye./Thaw follows frost; hard on the heel of spring/Treads summer sure to die, for hard on hers/Comes autumn, with his apples scattering;/Then back to wintertide, when nothing stirs./ But oh, whate’er the sky-led seasons mar,/Moon upon moon rebuilds it with her beams:…we are dust and dreams.

A. E Housman, classical scholar, and poet considered this poem from which these lines are taken and which he translated to be the most beautiful in ancient literature. And these lines speak to me more and more as the years pass. I’m going to finish this episode with a song using lines from the A. E. Housman translation which I use as bookend-verses for some rather well-known lines from Ecclesiastes chapter 3 which Pete Seeger used to such great effect in his phenomenal co-written hit, Turn Turn Turn.

His co-writer (who, in fact, wrote the bulk of the lyrics) has been variously credited as King Solomon, or some unknown scribe or scribes, or for those who revere the Bible as the word of God, the co-writer would then be- God, I suppose. The mash-up of the philosophy of the Graeco-Roman worlds with the inspired verse of the Judaic text appeals to me.

And my aim here is not hubristic- as I do not want to incur the wrath of the gods, or, indeed, God! Rather, it is to celebrate the individual caught in the coils of time and circumstance and to echo the pleas for peace which become more urgent and necessary with every day that passes. The title of this song is Dust and Dreams. I’ll preface it by Wallace Stevens’ poem Lunar Paraphrase

The moon is the mother of pathos and pity./When, at the wearier end of November,/Her old light moves along the branches,/Feebly, slowly, depending upon them;/When the body of Jesus hangs in a pallor,/Humanly near, and the figure of Mary,/Touched on by hoar-frost, shrinks in a shelter/Made by the leaves, that have rotted and fallen;/When-over-the-houses,-a-golden-illusion/Brings back an earlier season of quiet/And quieting dreams in the sleepers in darkness—/The moon is the mother of pathos and pity.// [insert song]

Next week features a song inspired by the atrocities we have witnessed in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion. The second song is one about parting.

Technical Stuff: Microphone- Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 9 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.

Letters from Radio Quotidia Lost and Found 2

Welcome to Radio Quotidia, episode 12. This month’s theme Lost and Found, 13 minutes or so of music and musings. Quentin Bega here at the mic. I’m broadcasting from a studio in the depths of Quotidia inside a digital onion. My aim to keep you entertained for a while.

Today we deal with teenage love as well as love in old age. Let us start in the maelstrom of hormones turbocharging the adolescent brain that finds expression in all sorts of media from the ubiquitously crude anatomical scrawls on the doors and walls of public toilets to the sublime lines of William Shakespeare’s deathless drama: Romeo and Juliet.

Between the dung-pit of the former and the sunlit pinnacle of the latter, you will no doubt be able to slot in many examples of your own. Listen to the Bard now: Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs./Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;/Being vex’d a sea nourish’d with lovers’ tears./So says the grandiloquent Romeo, but Juliet effortlessly surpasses his efforts at expressing love- as found here, Give me my Romeo, and, when I shall die,/Take him and cut him out in little stars,/And he will make the face of heaven so fine/That all the world will be in love with night,/And pay no worship to the garish sun./

In a previous Letters from Quotidia I recounted a poem I used with year-nine teenage students purportedly written by an Australian girl named Merrill Glass whose boyfriend had gone off to Vietnam. Whether true or apocryphal, it had a powerful effect on my classes, Remember the time you lent me your car and I dented it?/I thought you’d kill me…/But you didn’t.//Remember the time I forgot to tell you the dance was/formal, and you came in jeans?/I thought you’d hate me…/But you didn’t.//Remember the times I’d flirt with/other boys just to make you jealous, and you were?/I thought you’d drop me…/But you didn’t.//There were plenty of things you did to put up with me,/to keep me happy, to love me, and there are so many things I wanted to tell/you when you returned from/Vietnam…/But you didn’t.//

The song I offer as a study in teenage love has two godparents: First, Wordsworth, who defined poetry as emotion recollected in tranquillity. In writing this song I was recollecting, in wine-assisted tranquillity, how I felt as a teenager caught a maelstrom over the developing relationship with my girlfriend- who is now my wife- ineffable proof that even miserable sods like me can strike it lucky. Second godfather, Thomas Hardy, who was 72 when he began to write some of the most moving love poems to his wife Emma. Now- deluded as I may be about a lot of things- I’m not about to compare myself to these giants! Here is From Your Spell I wrote when I was 72- like Hardy- and there I will leave the comparison! [insert song]

The final song of this episode is one I never imagined I would write, as I was speculating about it all those years ago. I was a callow youth with pimples and pretensions. Hey Joe, knocked me sideways when first I heard it, and Purple Haze knocked me completely out of the park! In that summer of 1967, I went into a music store to buy Hendrix’s first LP, and the strangest thing happened: the girl behind the counter tried to talk me out of making the purchase! Something prompted her to attempt to save me from…who knows? I bought the LP after a brief tussle, and I have no ill after-effects to report more than 55 years later.

The B side of Purple Haze was 51^st Wedding Anniversary and I had just started going out with my girlfriend, later to be my wife, and remember puzzling about what such an anniversary would be like for me, for us. I don’t need to puzzle any more as that very anniversary occurred on 3^rd July 2022. Here is the song I wrote to mark the occasion- Our 51^st Wedding Anniversary Song. [insert song] Next month’s episode features the lyrics of Robert Hunter and A. E. Housman, each writing about our sublime celestial satellite, the moon. And as proof that they are wordsmiths of quality- they don’t reach for the rhymes June or spoon either!

Technical Stuff: Microphone- Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 9 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.