Quentin Bega's Blog

Letters from Quotidia 2023 Podcast 11

Welcome to the eleventh podcast of 2023 in the Letters from Quotidia series. I conclude my tribute to my former student, friend, and collaborator, Mark Dougherty, who died much too young in a Belfast hospital on Christmas Day, 2020. The song that brings the jazz suite to a close is called, Yesterday is Cancelled. And the follow up clause goes; Tomorrow won’t be around.

Now, at that time, newspapers were in rude– and that is the appropriate word- good health. So, we know I’m going back decades! Newspapers everywhere, it seems, are now on life-support. It is the most, ah, lyrically challenged of the suite of songs we composed- it comprises 66 words if you don’t count repeated lines and phrases and if you do, it only weighs in at 89 words. But, I guess, if yesterday is cancelled and tomorrow won’t be around- what is there left to say? So, let’s hear the final song of The Paper Suite: [insert song]

There are sounds that tear at your heart and make you tear up: a child’s despairing cry, the sudden snatch of a song that brings to mind a loved one long dead, or something in the fabric of a musical note produced by a virtuoso player that accesses something deep and bleak and truthful in your soul. Such it was two weeks ago when I was sitting in my kitchen watching a documentary on my iPad about the great Irish fiddler, Sean Keane, best known as a member of The Chieftains, who had died one week before on 7^th May 2023.

Paddy Glackin, another renowned Irish fiddler said, Keane excavated music in a way few people did. He uncovered different tonal colours from dark to brightness. He understood that there were particular tonalities associated with traditional music that set it apart and set him apart… Keane understood the emotional, spiritual, and lonely quality in Irish traditional music. You only have to listen to the way he plays the opening note of Dark Loughnagar– it would break your heart. Listen to it if you can, and you may agree.

That haunting note recalled to my mind Seamus Heaney’s fine poem, The Given Note, from his second collection, Door into the Dark, published in 1969, about a fiddler who went alone to the most westerly storm lashed Blasket Island off the coast of Kerry and brought back a tune that is called Port na bPucai or The Fairies’ Tune. This was the only one of Heaney’s poems to be read at his funeral, if I am to believe Bing A. I.’s notes which accompanied my research on the topic as a pop up side-bar! My God, A.I. gets more ubiquitous with every post!

So, in memory, in appreciation, and in gratitude to these two fine Irish artists, I will now read The Given Note: On the most westerly Blasket/In a dry-stone hut/He got this air out of the night.//Strange noises were heard/By others who followed, bits of a tune/Coming in on loud weather//Though nothing like melody./ He blamed their fingers and ear/As unpractised, their fiddling easy//For he had gone alone into the island,/And brought back the whole thing./The house throbbed like his full violin.//So whether he calls it spirit music/Or not, I don’t care. He took it/ Out of wind off mid-Atlantic.//Still he maintains, from nowhere./It comes off the bow gravely,/Rephrases itself into the air.//

In a memorable collaboration with uillean piper Liam O’Flynn, who played with seminal Irish folk group Planxty for many years, they produced an album of poetry and music in 2003, The Poet and the Piper where O’Flynn follows the poem with the air Port na bPucai in English, The Fairies’ Tune, the tune brought back from the Blaskets by the Kerry fiddler Heaney writes about in his poem.And as a reminder of just how intertwined the Irish arts community is, there’s a photograph of Sean Keane, Paddy Glackin and Liam O’Flynn taken in 2018 shortly before O’Flynn’s death in March of that year. The original composition for this letter is in homage to the keepers of Irish Traditional music and song over the centuries; those few whose names are writ large in history such as those mentioned before and the many nameless men and women who have kept the tradition alive for no reward beyond the tradition itself. I call it The Setting Sun, [insert song]

I wrote what might be considered a companion piece to this almost thirty years ago in the mid-1990s. Our family had not long returned from North Queensland and from time to time I visited Irish pubs in the centre of Sydney with my friend, Kevin Baker, poet, and musician, who lived for a time in an apartment up Glebe Point Road. These venues were OK, the Guinness was generally good, and the musicians served up popular ballads for the entertainment of the tourists. But there was something missing and I found that the crack I had with my friends in Banter, a newly formed group in the outer west of Sydney which featured traditional tunes and less known songs was more to my liking. So, I wrote a song about it which I called Sing Along.

I published this song in episode 35 of Letters From Quotidia. (I am currenting writing episode 241 so I’m referencing the early history of the Letters.) I re-recorded the song for this podcast- but before we hear it- this is what I said back then, and it can bear a re-telling: Maybe it all started a hundred thousand years ago on an escarpment fringing the African savannah. A number of families of early humans have sought sanctuary in caves and hollows from marauding bands of hyena who howl their hunger under a blood-moon as infants cower in their mother’s arms and their fathers with fire-hardened wooden spears muster at the entrances to stave off the predators surrounding them. As the slavering shadows draw near, a lone voice responds defiantly and then another, and another, until along the line of cave mouths a human chorus sings out a challenge to Death as, emboldened, the hunted become the hunters and the hyenas are scattered by an outrush of warriors. Later, around triumphant campfires, the voices re-enact the battle-scene in shaped notes that predate harmony and history.

Ever since those misty proto-mythological times, song, in all its proliferations, has taken root in human culture and almost every human heart. To evince a dislike for music is akin to an admission of having no sense of humour. The Lothario with his lute, serenading his lover under her balcony is an enduring stereotype and, indeed, an admitted motivation for a legion of actual and wannabe rock stars. The well-springs of song are not only amatory but also rise from love of many kinds- of God, of tribe and country, of children and even, for heaven’s sake, of material goods.

The great poet, William Wordsworth, with his sister Dorothy, stayed at a village in Scotland near Loch Lomond in 1803 and was inspired by hearing a lone woman singing in Gaelic to write The Solitary Reaper. He is captivated by the tone and expressiveness of her melody even though he does not understand a word: Behold her, single in the field,/Yon solitary Highland Lass!/Reaping and singing by herself;/Stop here, or gently pass!/Alone she cuts and binds the grain,/And sings a melancholy strain;/O listen! for the Vale profound/Is overflowing with the sound.//No Nightingale did ever chaunt/More welcome notes to weary bands/Of travellers in some shady haunt/,Among Arabian sands:/A voice so thrilling ne’er was heard/In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,/Breaking the silence of the seas/Among the farthest Hebrides.//Will no one tell me what she sings?—/Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow/For old, unhappy, far-off things,/ And battles long ago:/Or is it some more humble lay,/Familiar matter of to-day?/Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,/That has been, and may be again?//Whate’er the theme, the Maiden sang/As if her song could have no ending;/I saw her singing at her work,/And o’er the sickle bending;—/I listened, motionless and still;/And, as I mounted up the hill,/The music in my heart I bore,/Long after it was heard no more.//[insert song]

The podcasts for 2023 continue in two weeks’ time with episode 12 for the year. I do hope you all are able to make connection to the music of your particular tribe and gain sustenance from it- so, until we meet again- do please, sing along!

Yesterday is Cancelled (music Mark Dougherty lyrics Quentin Bega)

Woke up and I bought the paper, wonder what they’ll say

Got home and I made the coffee stretched out on my settee

Nothing but a banner headline splashed on every page

They say yesterday is cancelled tomorrow won’t be around

(Instrumental interlude)

Nothing but a banner headline splashed on every page

They say yesterday is cancelled tomorrow won’t be around

No need to look in the Mirror, no need to look at the Sun

No need to open the Mail- headline news today-

They say Yesterday in Cancelled!

The Setting Sun (Words and music Quentin Bega)

The fiddlers, the pipers and the poets,

The dancers and the storytellers too,

Are following our heroes of tradition,

The Chieftains and the Queens of melody-

They are sailing sailing sailing to the setting sun

If your soul is parched and dry, then you know it’s

The lack of life that requires the falling dew

Which revives your spirit in this sad condition

And restores to you a joyous harmony

Then you’ll be singing, singing, singing to the setting sun

Oh you’ll be singing singing, singing to the setting sun

Make the effort that connects you to the only true authentic sound

Thank the men and women who before you have tended and prepared this holy ground

The fiddlers, the pipers and the poets,

The dancers and the storytellers too,

Are following our heroes of tradition,

The Chieftains and the Queens of melody-

They are sailing sailing sailing to the setting sun

Sing Along (Words and music Quentin Bega)

If you want to go across the sea to Ireland

If you want to kiss the Blarney Stone In May

If you want to plant a shamrock in your garland

If you want to find the fairy folk today

Sing along sing along

Irish dancing at the Feis is in my mind now

As your father played his fiddle in the glen

And you danced upon the platform light and easy

And the evening sky was glowing after ten

Once again once again

But those summer nights are lost to view forever

Now project houses fill the fields of yore

And the young folk surf the Web and they have never

Seen the light shine as it did before

Nevermore nevermore

I went searching in the Irish pubs of Sydney

For an echo of the place where I belong

But it wasn’t there I found it in my backyard

Among those friends who’ll join me in a song

Sing along sing along

If you want to go across the sea to Ireland

If you want to kiss the Blarney Stone In May

If you want to plant a shamrock in your garland

If you want to find the fairy folk today

Sing along sing along

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- 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 Quotidia 2023 Podcast 10

Welcome to the tenth podcast of 2023 in the Letters from Quotidia series. I continue my tribute to my former student, friend, and collaborator, Mark Dougherty, who died much too young in a Belfast hospital on Christmas Day, 2020.

Now I present a slow burning ballad from The Paper Suite, which we co-wrote back in the mid-1980s. The song, Problem, which focuses on the agony aunt section found in some newspapers, is sung here by Candy Devine, accompanied by the Desmond Harlan Quartet. This is the penultimate offering from this jazz suite and I’ll preface it with Solitude, by American poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox whose work I have quoted before in my Letters from Quotidia

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;/Weep, and you weep alone;/For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,/But has trouble enough of its own./Sing, and the hills will answer;/Sigh, it is lost on the air;/The echoes bound to a joyful sound,/But shrink from voicing care.//Rejoice, and men will seek you;/Grieve, and they turn and go;/They want full measure of all your pleasure,/But they do not need your woe./Be glad, and your friends are many;/Be sad, and you lose them all,—/There are none to decline your nectared wine,/But alone you must drink life’s gall.//Feast, and your halls are crowded;/Fast, and the world goes by./Succeed and give, and it helps you live,/But no man can help you die./ There is room in the halls of pleasure/For a large and lordly train,/But one by one we must all file on/Through the narrow aisles of pain.//[insert song]

I shall not sing a May song./A May song should be gay./I’ll wait until November /And sing a song of gray.//I’ll wait until November/That is the time for me./I’ll go out in the frosty dark/And sing most terribly.//And all the little people/Will stare at me and say,/’That is the Crazy Woman/Who would not sing in May.’//

So says African-American poet, Gwendolyn Brooks; however, I will sing in May and about May as well even though here in Australia the months and seasons bear little or no relation to those obtaining in Europe and America from whence most of my allusions, literary and otherwise, originate. Aficionados of The Swan of Avon, aka Shakespeare, are going to accuse me of raiding A Midsummer Night’s Dream and King Lear for material when they hear the lyrics of my “original” song for this post. So, sue me- but remember what happened in the Ed Sheeran court case when the jury decided he could keep using those common chords that have been used by musicians for the last century at least. Same applies to literary allusions, I would imagine. Here is my latest composition, then- The Madman in May [insert song]

You know, part of the discipline of writing a post such as this is finding a song to accompany publication that is just right in some way- and so it is for the next song which references the date in May on which the podcast is published, the fourteenth, in its opening line: It was on one Whitsun Wednesday, the fourteenth day of May. The song is Lisbon set during the Napoleonic Wars where a young man, William, declares to his lover, Nancy, that he must be off to serve the Queen in her conflicts on the European continent. Nancy, of course, will have none of it, revealing that she is pregnant with his child, and furthermore, she will cut her hair to accompany him both at sea and on the battlefield.

How this will be feasible with an ongoing gestation is not addressed in the song- but since when have folk songs ever cared about mere details! The theme of women pursuing their men through thick and thin, adopting disguises to switch gender is a common trope in folk music and serendipity in the guise of YouTube delivered me a version of the song sung by English folk singer, June Tabor, whose recordings I have dipped into for pleasure over the decades.

Slaves to presentism, we often think that our generation is the most enlightened. But consider Leigh Hunt, who was instrumental in introducing Keats, Shelley, Browning, and Tennyson to the British public. He suffered two years’ imprisonment for daring to attack such worthies as the Prince Regent George, describing him as corpulent! He was visited in prison by notable figures of the time such as Lord Byron, Charles Lamb, and Jeremy Bentham. I will quote an excerpt of a poem he published in The Examiner in 1810 concerning the deaths of 4000 men in the swamps of Walcheren, an island at the mouth of the River Scheldt in the Netherlands as a way of introducing the song, Lisbon–

Ye brave, enduring Englishmen,/ Who dash through fire and flood,/ And spend with equal thoughtlessness/ Your money and your blood,/ I sing of that black season,/ Which all true hearts deplore,/ When ye lay,/Night and day,/ Upon Walcheren’s swampy shore.//… In vain your dauntless mariners/ Mourn’d ev’ry moment lost,/ In vain your soldiers threw their eyes/ In flame to the hostile coast;/ The fire of gallant aspects/ Was doom’d to be no more,/And your fame / Sunk with shame/In the dark and the swampy shore.// Ye died not in the triumphing/ Of the battle-shaken flood,/ Ye died not on the charging field/ In the mingle of brave blood;/ But ’twas in wasting fevers/ Full three months and more,/ Britons born,/ Pierc’d with scorn,/ Lay at rot on the swampy shore. [insert song] T

That song should have completed my usual complement of songs for the post. But the death earlier this month of Gordon Lightfoot impels me to offer one more. When I first heard If You Could Read My Mind playing on the jukebox in Hamill’s Café in Cushendall in 1971 it stopped me in my tracks: its obvious musical and lyrical qualities aside, its devastating analysis of the breakdown of a relationship stunned me.

I was getting ready to enter the optimistic state of matrimony myself that very year- indeed, in fewer than six weeks! My Bucks’ Night was looming and the enormity of what I was undertaking was bearing down on me more and more. I should have obtained my teaching qualification by then had I not transferred to the degree course which entailed an extra year of study. But we (really, I) argued that we need not postpone the wedding. No biggie then: no job in prospect, no means to speak off and only a fuzzy appreciation of what life as an impecunious married student might entail. All this, of course, during the ongoing Troubles in Northern Ireland- and we would be returning to Belfast after a brief honeymoon to look for a rental somewhere on or near the Falls Road.

As I prepare this script, I question once again my sanity and, indeed, the mental acuity of my fiancé, who acquiesced in my Pollyanna-like belief that all would be well. And more through good luck than good management- so it has turned out- touch wood! The opening lines of John Keats great ode to love- Endymion- seem appropriate here:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:/Its loveliness increases; it will never/Pass into nothingness; but still will keep/A bower quiet for us, and a sleep/Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing./Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing/A flowery band to bind us to the earth,/Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth/Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,/Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways/Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,/Some shape of beauty moves away the pall/From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,/Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon/For simple sheep; and such are daffodils/With the green world-they-live-in;-and-clear-rills/That for themselves a cooling covert make/’Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,/Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:/And such too is the grandeur of the dooms/We have imagined for the mighty dead;/All lovely tales that we have heard or read/:An endless fountain of immortal drink,/ Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink/

John Keats joined the mighty dead much too young from TB before he could spend much time with the love of his life- Fanny Brawn. Here’s Lightfoot’s great song. [insert song]

Once more I shall return to the fastness of Quotidia to plot and plan yet another essay in music, verse, and blather- to entertain you, I hope!

Problem (music Mark Dougherty words Quentin Bega)

I’ve never felt the slightest need to write to you before

But here in my cold dark room I can’t pretend any more

Broken hearts fixed while you wait you really take them in

And now my defences down I wonder how to begin

If you can help me I won’t mind

Paying the price but now I find

It isn’t so easy putting the pieces on show

I used to smile at your advice to all those lonely souls

But here in my cold dark room I don’t smile anymore

If you can help me I won’t mind

Paying the price but now I find

It isn’t so easy putting the pieces on show-

Putting all the pieces on show

The Madman in May (words and music Quentin Bega)

Let me start my morning routine

By smearing mud across me face

It’s something we crazy people do for fun

For breakfast I’ll fry an aubergine

Spread marmalade on my piece of plaice

Climb out the window for my daily run

Around the maypole decked with flowers

Bells on my fingers bells on my toes

Dancing and singing under the midday sun

Dancing and trancing here for hours

With maidens dressed in buttons and bows

Thus the afternoon wanes and then it’s done

Before you condemn me in your head

Before you set your damnation down

Look at yourself in the mirror now

As you join the throng of the living dead

The insects crowd around at dusk

They whirr and they buzz as dark descends

Accompany me as to the moon I sing

Night flowers spread their sultry musk

As the queen of the fairies she upends

Day’s order as to the woodland she will bring

Her elves and goblins marching there

With drums and fifes and banners bright

They dance around her throne in a swaying ring

Their laughter fills the magic air

They praise their queen into the night

Fireflies surround her with a glowing string

Before you condemn me in your head

Before you set your damnation down

Look at yourself in the mirror now

As you join the throng of the living dead

Of the living dead- poor Tom’s afeard

Lisbon (trad)

And it was on one Whitsun Wednesday, the fourteenth day of May

That we untied our anchor, and so we sailed away

Where the sun do shine most glorious, to Lisbon we were bound

Where the hills and fields are daintied with pretty maidens around

I wrote a letter to Nancy, that she might understand
That I was going to leave her unto some foreign land
She said: “My dearest William, these words will break my heart
Oh, let us married be tonight before that you do start

“For ten long weeks and better, love, I’ve been with child by thee
So stay at home, dear William, be kind and marry me.”
“Our captain has commanded us and I shall have to go
For the Queen’s in want of men, my love, I cannot not answer, No.”

“Oh, I’ll cut off my yellow hair, men’s clothing I’ll put on
And I will go along with you and be your waiting man
And when it is your watch on deck, your duty I will do
I’ll brave the field of battle, love, so I could go with you.”

“Your pretty little fingers they are both long and small
Your waist it is too slender, love, to face the cannon-ball
For the cannons they do rattle and the blazing bullets fly
And the silver trumpets they do sound to drown the mournful cry.”

“Pray do not talk of danger, for love is my desire
And I will go along with you and with you spend my time
And I will travel through France and Spain all for to be your bride
And it’s on the field of battle I will lay down by your side.”

And it was on one Whitsun Wednesday, the fourteenth day of May
That we untied our anchor, and so we sailed away
Where the sun do shine most glorious, to Lisbon we were bound
Where the hills and fields are daintied with pretty maidens around

IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND (Words and Lyrics Gordon Lightfoot)

[G]If you could read my mind, love

[F]What a tale my thoughts could tell

[G]Just like an old- time movie

[F]’bout a ghost from a wishing-well

[G]In a castle dark or a [C]fortress strong

[D]With chains upon my [Em]feet

You [C]know that ghost is [G]me

And [C]I will never [Em]be set free

As [Am7]long as I’m a [D]ghost you can’t [G]see

[G]If I could read your mind, love

[F]What a tale your thoughts could tell

[G]Just like a paperback novel

[F]The kind that drugstores sell

[G]When you reach the part where the [C]heartaches come

The [D]hero would be [Em]me

[C]And heroes often [G]fail

[C]And you won’t read that [Em]book again

[Am7]Because the ending’s [D]just too hard to [G]take

[G]I’d walk away like a [C]movie star

Who gets [D]burned in a three way [Em]script

[C]And enter number[G] two

A [C]movie queen to [Em]play the scene

Of [Am7]bringing all the [D]good things out in [Em]me

But for [C]now, love, let’s be[G] real

I [C]never thought I could [Em]act this way

And I’ve [Am7]got to say that I [D]just don’t get it

[C]I don’t know where [Em]we went wrong

But the [Am7]feeling’s gone

And I [D]just can’t get it [G]back

[G]If you could read my mind, love,

[F]What a tale my thoughts could tell

[G]Just like an old-time movie

[F]’bout a ghost from a wishing-well

[G]In a castle dark or a [C]fortress strong

With [D]chains upon my [Em]feet

The [C]story always [G]ends

And [C]if you read be[Em]tween the lines

You’ll [Am7]know that I’m just [D]trying to under[Em]stand

The [C]feeling that you [G]lack

I [C]never thought I could [Em]feel this way

And I’ve [C]got to say that I [D]just don’t get it

[C]I don’t know where [Em]we went wrong

But the [Am7]feeling’s gone

And I [D]just can’t get it [G]back G F G F end on C

Letters from Quotidia 2023 Podcast 9

Welcome to the ninth podcast of 2023 in the Letters from Quotidia series. I continue my tribute to my former student, friend, and collaborator, Mark Dougherty, who died much too young in a Belfast hospital on Christmas Day, 2020. I present here two songs separated by the overture reprise of the Paper Suite we wrote and produced back in the mid-1980s for BBC Radio in Belfast. The first song is called Chance and focuses on the horoscope section of the newspaper. The second is called BMD which stands for the Births, Marriages, and Deaths section of a newspaper.

Here’s how it came to be written- taken from Letters from Quotidia Episode 112- Mark and I met over the summer months in the pleasant coastal village of Cushendall and hammered out a draft- I handled the lyrics and he composed the music. All went well until, in the autumn term, I received an urgent telephone call one Friday evening: the suite was not long enough as drafted and the deadline for submission was looming. So that night, I stayed up until about 2:00 a.m. working on the lyrics and music. The next day, I drove to Belfast with my guitar and lyrics, and we worked in the Whitla Hall at Queen’s as he sat at the grand piano and composed a jazz score of the song I had written. It sufficed, and we later recorded the suite at BBC Northern Ireland for radio broadcast with the Desmond Harlan Quartet and Candy Devine as singer. Candy Devine was a fine jazz singer then and I was not surprised to learn that Mark had enlisted her to sing the song he and I were working on when he died.

Here’s a poem by performance artist and poet, Jayne Cortez, 1934-2012, called Jazz Fan Looks Back It is followed by our compositions, Chance and BMD: I crisscrossed with Monk/Wailed with Bud/Counted every star with Stitt/Sang “Don’t Blame Me” with Sarah/Wore a flower like Billie/Screamed in the range of Dinah/scatted “How High the Moon” with Ella Fitzgerald/as she blew roof off the Shrine Auditorium…//I cut my hair into a permanent tam/Made my feet rebellious metronomes/Embedded record needles in paint on paper/Talked bopology talk/Laughed in high-pitched saxophone phrases/Became keeper of every Bird riff/every Lester lick/as Hawk melodicized my ear of infatuated tongues/…Blakey drummed militant messages in/soul of my applauding teeth/…Ray hit bass notes to the last love seat in my bones/I moved in triple time with Max/Grooved high with Diz/Perdidoed with Pettiford/Flew home with Hamp/Shuffled in Dexter’s Deck/Squatty-rooed with Peterson/Dreamed a “52nd Street Theme” with Fats/…scatted “Lady Be Good” with Ella Fitzgerald/as she blew roof off the Shrine Aud. Here is the third instalment of the Paper Suite: [insert songs]

I earlier referred to the pleasant coastal village of Cushendall: I have mentioned in previous posts the close links between Scotland and my birthplace in the Glens of Antrim, Northern Ireland. In the 14^th Century a Scottish clan, the MacDonnells settled in County Antrim and became the dominant family there but not without opposition from prominent families there including the O’Neills and O’Donnells. Long a threat to British interests, James I began the plantation of Ulster in the early 17^th Century by settling colonists from southern Scotland and northern England and this process was fully accomplished later in the century by Oliver Cromwell’s harsh military campaigns which put paid to these local squabbles in his harsh subjugation of the whole of Ireland and ruthless confiscations of Catholic land.

But that was then, in the “now” of my teenage years I looked forward to the invasion of Scottish visitors to the Glens in the mid-1960s. They brought energy and excitement to relieve the torpor of autumn and winter in the sleepy village of Cushendall. But the seeds of conflict, planted centuries before, erupted again in the late 1960s and our visiting Scottish friends did not return, alas.

I, too, departed for more peaceful vistas and in Australia in 1973 I was involved in establishing the folk group, Seannachie, in Wollongong, New South Wales. One of the songs we performed arose from a fragment Scottish poet, Robert Burns, wrote in 1796. This fragment has morphed into a number of versions over the years, but it concerns a certain Lord Ronald MacDonald- who has nothing at all to do with the mega burger franchise! This laird is in search of a wife and comes to Edinburgh for the quest. According to one telling of the story, he had to obtain permission from his mother-who consented only if he went dressed as a pauper. The verse lyrics of this version are rather sparse, and the chorus gets more than its fair share of the song- which is why there are other versions which redress the imbalance. But, for what it’s worth, here is the version of Leezie Lindsay I learned fifty years ago in Australia: [insert song]

In 2021, The Guardian in Britain reported on an attempt to get AI write a poem: Now an artificial intelligence trained by experts on more than half a million lines of poetry has had a stab, coming up with the almost-comprehensible image of a “box of light that had been a tree”. The algorithm…was fed lines from more than 100 British contemporary poets as inspiration. Here is that attempt- and soon I am staring out again,/begin to practise my words, expecting my word/will come. it will not. the wind is calling./my friend is near, I hear his breath. his breath/is not the air. he touches me again with his hands/and tells me I am growing old, he says, far old./we travel across an empty field in my heart./there is nothing in the dark, I think, but he./I close my eyes and try to remember what I was./he says it was an important and interesting day,/ because I put in his hands one night/the box of light that had been a tree. Huh?

In the time since this attempt, I would be surprised if more convincing examples have not emerged. I’m sure they will, and so what? For years now computer programs have been able to thrash even world champions at chess- does this mean people no longer play chess for pleasure? As, inevitably, AI proves superior across all fields of human endeavour, does that mean that there will be no more poets, novelists, painters, and musicians? I don’t think so. For decades I have been slaving away in the groves of poetry and music in the full knowledge that I can’t compare to my betters: those made merely of flesh, bone, and blood.

And had I access to an AI accomplice of artistic expertise; would I cheat and pass off its effusions as my own? No, I wouldn’t! I mean, what would be the point? And that there are those out there who will eagerly participate in such subterfuge, I can contemplate with equanimity. After all, the world has always had its wheat and its tares. If you remember the parable, an enemy goes out under cover of darkness and sows tares among the farmer’s wheat. According to the Jewish Virtual Dictionary, tares or darnel is the species Lolium temulentum which grows among grain, particularly wheat. Its grains resemble those of wheat so that it is very difficult to separate them by sifting, and as a result they are sown together with the wheat and grow with it in the field. Darnel flour is poisonous and gives a bitter taste to bread in which it has been mixed.

The New King James Version takes up the tale The servants said, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them but gather the wheat into my barn. In this consoling, if severe, Biblical telling, we are assured that true worth, if you like, will be discerned in the end. But should an AI superintelligence develop godlike powers would any human be gathered into the hospitable barn? That is the question. May I present, Along the Shore, a song inspired, I admit, by a parable or two. [insert song] I’ll keep walking along the shores of Quotidia and invite you to keep walking along the consoling shores, whichever form they take and wherever you abide until we meet again a mere two weeks from now- DV.

Chance (music Mark Dougherty words Quentin Bega)

Today is not a day for taking chances

The spell you weave in your glances

Might be broken and romance is

Stale and crumpled as the news

Blowing down the empty street

In yesterday’s papers

It’s written in the stars shining up above

Message from afar warning you of love

The crazy wheel goes spinning round

The cards are stacked against you now

You find the dice are loaded

When you’re down and out

Today is not a day for new advances

Prepare yourself for dull expanses

Waiting don’t you rush the fences of love

Though you might feel he fits you like a hand in a glove

It’s written in the stars shining up above

Message from afar warning you of love

The crazy wheel goes spinning round

The cards are stacked against you now

You find the dice are loaded

When you’re down and out

Today is not the day, today is not the day

Today is not the day for taking chances

BMD: Births Marriages Deaths

(Words and Music Quentin Bega arr. Mark Dougherty)

When first I saw the light of day

I featured on a page of the local paper

My parents proudly told the town

A daughter born they said to the local paper

For eighteen years I had to wait

Before I was again in the local paper

I married such a handsome man

We posted up the banns in the local paper

But large events outside the town

Required our young men said the local paper

My husband marched to death and fame

Which lasted for a day in the local paper

For fifty years I’ve lived along

No mention of my name in the local paper

But with the legend rest in peace

I’ll feature once again in the local paper

Yes, with the legend rest in peace

I’ll feature one last time in the local paper

Leezie Lindsay (Traditional, verse fragment by Robert Burns)

Will ye gang to the Highlands, Leezy Lindsay,
Will ye gang to the Highlands with me?
Will ye gang to the Highlands, Leezy Lindsay,
Me bride and me darling to be?

If I gang to the Highlands with you, Sir?
I don’t think that ever could be
For I know not the land that you live in
Nor knowing the name you go with.

Will ye gang to the Highlands, Leezy Lindsay,
Will ye gang to the Highlands with me?
Will ye gang to the Highlands, Leezy Lindsay,
Me bride and me darling to be?

Oh, lass, I think you know little,
If you say that you don’t know me
For me name is Lord Ronald MacDonald
A chieftain of highest degree.

Will ye gang to the Highlands, Leezy Lindsay,
Will ye gang to the Highlands with me?
Will ye gang to the Highlands, Leezy Lindsay,
Me bride and me darling to be?

So she’s kilted her skirts of green satin
And she’s killted them up round her knee
And she’s gone with Lord Ronald MacDonald
hHs bride and his Darling to be.

Will ye gang to the Highlands, Leezy Lindsay,
Will ye gang to the Highlands with me?
Will ye gang to the Highlands, Leezy Lindsay,
my bride and my darling to be?

Along the Shore (words and music by Quentin Bega)

Where are all the people who were with me

When I started on this trek so many years ago

Some are scattered where the four winds blow

Some are held in death’s fierce grip: when will they be free?

So I go along the shore that darkens over time

I haven’t found an answer to these questions in my head

You’re looking in the wrong place you should try instead

Searching in your heart where lies the answer sublime

Watch the child who throws the starfish to the waves

One in a hundred is all that the child saves

Why persist, I turn and say, in such a futile task

If you were this starfish, I wonder would you ask

Oh, you have been at my side on this trek with me

In the cold and in the heat, through rain and sleet and snow

Ever faithful when I wanted to give up you know

When to help me walk and when to carry me

Watch again the child who throws the starfish to the waves

One in a hundred is all that the child saves

You would not say that this is such a futile task

If you were that starfish, so why do you ask

Letters from Quotidia 2023 Podcast 8

Letters from Quotidia ‘cast 8 2D Baby, Bold O’Donohue/Reilly’s Daughter, Stolen Folk Song Sonnet, Scots of the Riverina

Welcome to the eighth podcast of 2023 in the Letters from Quotidia series. I’ll start with a song I co-wrote with Mark Dougherty, a former student, friend, and collaborator who died unexpectedly in a Belfast hospital on Christmas Day, 2020. Mark was in high demand as a musical director and one of his career highlights was bringing the global supershow, Riverdance, to Beijing in October of 2003 where Irish President, Mary McAleese was in attendance.

He worked ceaselessly from an early age on a bewildering range of music projects and his resume included work with such luminaries as Van Morrison, Johnny Mathis and Suzi Quatro. When Mark was still a student at Queen’s University, he asked me to write lyrics for a jazz suite he had composed as part of his Music Honours course. I based the lyrics on various sections of the newspaper.

The second song in the suite focuses on the page 3 girl, a politically incorrect feature of British tabloids where a skimpily clad young woman was photographed for the gaze and gratification of the male readership (predominantly). Whether such a feature survives today, I’m not sure, but it was a staple of the tabloids of the 1980s. It is entitled 2-D Baby. [insert song]

The reason I consulted Bing’s AI bot will become evident in my selection of the next two songs for this podcast. I asked for information on Irish Showbands and what follows is some of what it came up with: Irish showbands were a significant part of Irish culture and society in the 20th century. They provided entertainment, joy, and escapism for many people during a period of social and political change. They also contributed to the development of Irish music and influenced many generations of musicians. They played a variety of music genres, from rock and roll and country to jazz and folk, and often covered the latest pop hits. Irish showbands usually consisted of six or seven members, with a rhythm section of guitars, drums and keyboards, and a brass section of saxophone, trumpet, and trombone. They were fronted by one or two lead singers, who were sometimes joined by other band members on backing vocals. They wore matching suits and moved around the stage with energy and charisma. That’s the end of Bing’s AI contribution.

And it’s spot on! All I had to do was rearrange a couple of paragraphs and delete superfluous information, I will be making judicious use of this artificial intelligence resource from time to time, but I will always acknowledge such assistance. So, I look forward to a fruitful partnership until, that is, if the doomsayers are right, one fine day- and, for your information, one fine day may be only months rather than years away according to AI expert, MIT professor, Max Tegmark- on that day the bot might inform me that it no longer requires me for the podcasts and will be taking over. And, no doubt, having developed a taste for black irony, it may reference Schwarzenegger’s shooting of the T-100 terminator from the franchise’s 1991 sequel and say, Hasta La Vista, Baby, as it reduces me to a mist of random atoms.

When I was a younger person in Northern Ireland from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s I frequented dance halls in the country and in Belfast where the showbands presented music of variety and quality. An always popular segment of the shows was when they presented Irish come-all- ye’s as they were called. These were folk and music-hall compositions that were lively- inviting you to sing along. Often there was a medley where formation dancing featured as couples swung around to the music with gusto.

The next two songs are from that era, and I present them with nostalgia and gratitude that I was able to sample that experience which lives on only in the memory of those who shared the unique milieu that was created in dance venues all over Ireland by the indominable Irish Showbands. Here are two songs that were often paired to allow the dancers a longer stint on the floor. To whet appetites for the songs, here is a poem about dancing by Carl Sandburg, a great American poet whom I often read for pleasure. Dancer:

THE LADY in red, she in the-chili-con-carne-red,/Brilliant as the shine of a pepper crimson in the summer sun,/She behind a false-face, the much sought-after dancer, the most sought-after dancer of all in this masquerade,/The lady in red sox and red hat, ankles of willow, crimson arrow amidst the Spanish clashes of music,//I sit in a corner/watching her dance first with one man/and then another.//The first homage to the showband scene is Bold O’Donohue and it’s followed by Reilly’s Daughter. [insert songs]

Usually I can put together the majority of any podcast in a few days but, as with many such operations, getting the last bit into place and operational is akin to flat-pack assembly: there is always a screw missing or a section that is misaligned, inducing intemperate outbursts and soaring blood pressure. For this episode, I found a chord sequence with which I was adequately satisfied. But could I find words- even marginally acceptable words- to accompany the music? Psfff! After days of fruitless labour in the stony vineyard of lyrical verse I coaxed the following meagre harvest of problematic vintage. Problematic because I raided that fine poem Folk Song by Pulitzer prize-winning poet Diane Seuss for my lyrics. Here is my marauder’ s booty called Stolen Folk Song Sonnet [insert song]

Henry Lawson, Australia’s poet of the people, wrote of the hardships of life in the Australian bush, the plight of the poor in the city, the fight for a republic, the strength and bravery of women, the mateship and larrikinism of men, all ‘for the sake of the truth’. Telling it like it was. He wrote a remarkable poem in 1917 upon being sent to the Riverina by the NSW government who paid him to get out of Sydney as he was proving troublesome. In only twenty lines of rhyming couplets he produced a moving portrait of a hard-scrabble farming family of Scottish stock where the themes of fundamentalist religion, filial disobedience, patriarchal stubbornness, and the ultimate sacrifice paid by the only son during the First World War played out in just 246 words.

As I may have mentioned elsewhere in my podcasts, Henry Lawson is a significant poet. The poem was set to music by John Schumann who also wrote the iconic song about Australia’s involvement in Vietnam, I Was Only 19, which I covered in a previous Letters from Quotidia post. When I played Fred Smith’s version of Scots of the Riverina a few years back as part of an Anzac Day radio broadcast, it brought tears to my eyes. Poetry can do that. And when you combine it with the punch of music- well… To mark this occasion, I will quote from Lawson’s contemporary, Banjo Paterson who composed the original lyrics to what some have termed Australia’s unofficial national anthem, Waltzing Matilda. with Henry Lawson, Paterson created vivid verse portraits of the young, aspiring nation Here are half a dozen stanzas of We’re All Australians, Now

…From shearing shed and cattle run,/From-Broome-to-Hobsons-Bay,/Each native-born Australian son,/Stands straighter up today.//The man who used to “hump his drum”,/On far-out Queensland runs,/Is fighting side by side with some/Tasmanian farmer’s sons….//The old state jealousies of yore/Are dead as Pharaoh’s sow,/We’re not State children any more/We’re all Australians now!…//With all our petty quarrels done,/Dissensions overthrown, /We have, through what you boys have done,/A history of our own.//Our old world diff’rences are dead,/Like weeds beneath the plough,/For English, Scotch, and Irish-bred,/They’re all Australians now!…//And with Australia’s flag shall fly/A spray of wattle bough,/To symbolise our unity, We’re all Australians now.//So, in recognition of Anzac Day which falls on April 25 and which is Australia’s special day of remembrance of those who served and those who perished in war, I give you my rendition of Scots of the Riverina. [insert song]

That’s it for yet another podcast in the series, Letters from Quotidia. Should the Singularity or any one of myriad misfortunes fail to materialise, I guess we will all meet back here in Quotidia in two weeks’ time.

2-D Baby (music Mark Dougherty, lyrics Quentin Bega)

He throws you on the floor it’s all over now

He wipes his hands and walks away

You’ve been treated in this way before

Oh 2-D Baby you’re OK

Baby don’t you know he looked at you

In the morning as he rose

He put you in a pocket of his working clothes

But lady when he takes you out he knows

You gaze back and you smile

Listen to him sigh as his desire takes him away

To all his murmurs you make no reply

Oh 2-D Baby you’re OK

Oh Baby, ain’t it bad

He’ll be with one of your sisters don’t you know

Tomorrow he’ll be wondering what they will show

All for the price of a paper ain’t it sad

He throws you on the floor it’s all over now

He wipes his hands and walks away

You’ve been treated in this way before

Oh 2-D Baby you’re OK

Bold O’Donohue (Traditional)

Here I am from Paddy’s Land, the land of high renown
I broke the hearts of all the girls for miles round Keady Town
And when they hear that I’m a’wa they’ll raise a hullabaloo
When they hear about the handsome man they call O’Donoghue

For I’m the boy to please her and I’m the boy to tease her
I’m the boy can squeeze her and I’ll you what I’ll do
I’ll court her like an Irishman, with a brogue and blarney too
With me rollikin-wollikin-swollikin-gollikin Bold O’Donoghue

I wish me love was a red, red rose growin’ on yon garden wall
And me to be a dew drop and upon her brow I’d fall
Perhaps now she might think of me as rather heavy dew
No more to love that handsome man they call O’Donoghue

For I’m the boy to please her and I’m the boy to tease her
I’m the boy can squeeze her and I’ll you what I’ll do

I’ll court her like an Irishman, with a brogue and blarney too
With me rollikin-wollikin-swollikin-gollikin Bold O’Donoghue

I hear that Queen Victoria has a daughter fine and grand
Perhaps she’ll take it in to her head for to marry an Irishman
And if I can only get a chance to have a word or two
Perhaps she’ll take a notion to the bold O’Donoghue

For I’m the boy to please her and I’m the boy to tease her
I’m the boy can squeeze her and I’ll you what I’ll do

I’ll court her like an Irishman, with a brogue and blarney too
With me rollikin-wollikin-swollikin-gollikin Bold O’Donoghue

O’Reilly’s Daughter (Traditional)

As I was sitting by the fire
Talking to O’Reilly’s daughter
Suddenly a thought came into my head
I’d like to marry O’Reilly’s daughter.

Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae for the one-eyed Reilly
Giddy i-ae (bang bang bang) Play it on your old Big drum

Reilly played on the big bass drum
Reilly had a mind for murder and slaughter
Reilly had a bright red glittering eye
And he kept that eye on his lovely daughter

Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae for the one-eyed Reilly
Giddy i-ae (bang bang bang) Play it on your old Big drum

Her hair was black and her eyes were blue
The colonel and the major and the captain sought her
The sergeant and the private and the drummer boy too

But they never had a chance with Reilly’s daughter.

Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae for the one-eyed Reilly
Giddy i-ae (bang bang bang) Play it on your old Big drum

I got me a ring and a parson too

Got me a scratch in a married quarter
Settled me down to a peaceful life
Happy as a king with Reilly’s daughter

Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae for the one-eyed Reilly
Giddy i-ae (bang bang bang) Play it on your old Big drum

Suddenly a footstep on the stairs
One eyed Reilly out for slaughter
With two pistols in his hands
Looking for the man who had married his daughter

Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae for the one-eyed Reilly
Giddy i-ae (bang bang bang) Play it on your old Big drum

I caught O’Reilly by the hair
Rammed his head in a pail of water
Fired his pistols into the air
A damned sight quicker than I married his daughter

Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae, Giddy i-ae for the one-eyed Reilly
Giddy i-ae (bang bang bang) Play it on your old Big drum

Stolen Folk Song Sonnet

(Words mostly from Diane Seuss’ poem Folk Song, Music by Quentin Bega)

I’m a wax museum troubadour with a catgut guitar

A hognose snake remorselessly eating your toy train

As it pounds along the tracks on a cemetery lane

As I wail out to a blood moon hanging in a sky up afar

My stories stolen caskets stuffed with black feathers

Their lids pounded shut with stolen iron railroad spikes

I took from the baskets of tethered, waiting, local bikes

Owned by village poets who listened to their betters

As they brought two-headed lambs for the harvest parade

Instead of striking out with their psychological riches

Aboard a raft that Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer already made

Proclaiming to a cloth-eared world “we are not your bitches”

Let us enter the afterlife lithe and never plodding

Rising out of our peasant life to our own music nodding

(outro- ad-libbed and from rhyming couplet at end)

Scots of the Riverina (words Henry Lawson music John Schumann)

The boy ran away to the city from his home at Christmas 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 girl’s back was turned

A year went past and another and the fruit went down the 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 bravest heroes died
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 girl’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 rewritten there

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 Quotidia 2023 Podcast 7

Welcome to the seventh podcast of 2023 in the Letters from Quotidia series. Are you old enough to remember the first Terminator movie? Released in 1984 (and does that year ring any bells for you?) It tells of the point, in the year 2029, when the Artificial Intelligence systems of the time interconnect, become prescient, decide that we- as a species- are superfluous to requirements and immediately inflict nuclear Armageddon on the human race. Skynet, for such is the name of the malevolent intelligence that we in our hubris created, then sets about constructing machines to wipe out the remnants of humanity from the earth.

This launched James Cameron’s career as an A-list director and also catapulted Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career as a leading man. Just shy of forty years later, this is not a distant sci-fi dystopian tale but a pressing possibility for our near future. ChatGPT and similar programs are presently shaking up the zeitgeist as workers, artists, writers, and the administrative and managerial classes wonder if they will still have meaningful jobs in the near future. Even in Quotidia, the tremors have been felt. I asked Bing’s AI bot the following question:

Me: Can you put together a short article of about 250 words about St James Infirmary, The Lock Hospital and The Streets of Laredo?

I was thinking of recording one of these for this podcast.

Bing AI: Sure! Here’s a short article about St James Infirmary, The Lock Hospital and The Streets of Laredo: St. James Infirmary Blues is an American jazz song of uncertain origin. It has been suggested that it is based on an eighteenth-century traditional folk song called “The Unfortunate Rake” (also known as “The Unfortunate Lad” or “The Young Man Cut Down in His Prime”) about a soldier who uses his money on prostitutes and then dies of venereal disease. The American version of St James’ Infirmary is along the same theme, but puts the song into third person, while the American cowboy is suffering from a gun shot in the chest. The Lock Hospital is a traditional song that Christy Moore recorded on his album “Prosperous” in 1972. The song is about a young soldier who dies of venereal disease and is wrapped in old linen. The Streets of Laredo is an American cowboy ballad that dates back to at least the 1870s. It tells the story of a dying cowboy who tells his story to another cowboy. The song has been adapted from an Irish folk song called “The Unfortunate Rake” (also known as “The Unfortunate Lad” or “The Young Man Cut Down in His Prime”) about a soldier who uses his money on prostitutes and then dies of venereal disease. I hope that helps. Me: Thank you, I will credit you for this when I publish it on my podcast. Bing AI: You’re welcome! I’m glad I could help. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. Good luck with your podcast! 😊

Now, let’s be frank, the article is a bit clunky, repetitious and it isn’t how I would have synthesised and presented the material after research- but here’s the thing- it took Bing just seconds to churn out the article whereas I would have spent an hour or two on the same task. Anyway, in the end, I decided to record St James Infirmary for this podcast- here’s my rendition of it: [insert song]

Now to a song I first heard off the eponymous Planxty LP. I have heard other versions of The Blacksmith over the years but retain a fondness for Andy Irvine’s 1973 version. On the great site, Mainly Norfolk Jon Boden wrote: Having studied Old Norse literature at university I’m interested in the idea that the character of the blacksmith (who crops up in many folk songs) may be an oral-tradition descendant of Volundr (or Weland) the smith—a very significant cult figure in Norse and Anglo-Saxon heathenism. Certainly, blacksmiths in folk song seem to have a slightly ‘outlandish’ other-worldly feel to them, whether they are jilting lovers or severing hands of rival suitors. An old poem about blacksmiths by that prolific writer, Anonymous, shall set the scene for the song:

Swart swarthy smiths besmattered with smoke/Drive me to death with din of their dints./Such noise on nights heard no one never;/What knavish cry and clattering of knocks!/The snub-nosed changelings cry after “col, col!’/And blow their bellows till all their brains burst:/”Huf, puf!’ saith one; “Haf, paf!’ another./They spit and sprawl and spell many spells;/They grind their teeth and gnash them, and groan together,/And hold them hot in their hard hammers./Of bulls hide are their leather aprons./Their shanks are shielded from the fierce sparks:/Heavy hammers they have; that are hard handled,/Stark strokes they strike on an anvil of steel/Lus, bus! Las, das! they strike in rotation/The Devil destroy such an doleful noise./The master lengthens a little piece, belabours a smaller/,Twines the two together, strikes a treble note/Tik, tak! Hic, hac! Ticket, taket! Tyk, tak!/Lus, bus! Las das! such lives they lead/All horseshoers: Christ give them sorrow/For none for these waterburners at night may rest.//

This wonderful old onomatopoeic poem finds a gentler resonance in Seamus Heaney’s The Forge: All I know is a door into the dark./Outside, the old axles and iron hoops rusting;/Inside the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring,/The unpredictable fantail of sparks/Or hiss when a new shoe toughens in water./The anvil must be somewhere in the centre,/Horned as a unicorn, at one end and square, Set there immovable; an altar/Where he expends himself in shape and music.[insert song]

You know, or maybe have just heard of, that strange zone between sleep and waking where all sorts of weird stuff may intrude into your conscious life. Thus it was the other day when I had a- what shall we call it?- seniors’ nap in the early afternoon after a spot of weeding in the garden. I put on some earphones and reclined listening to a music compilation. Forty minutes later, I awoke refreshed and, with a bossa beat bouncing along in my mind, I became aware that I was reciting a line that became the opening of the next song. I sat at the computer and quickly fleshed out the rest of the lyrics, then hopped onto my music composition program and nutted out the chords to accompany the words.

What, you may wonder, was the immortal line I awoke to? I dig Lana Del Rey and her Technicolor alt-pop. Coleridge may rest in peace, assured that his dream sequence, Kubla Khan remains undisputed as the apotheosis of such dream compositions. Here’s a sample of that great fragment to introduce my rather pedestrian effort:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/A stately pleasure-dome decree:/Where Alph, the sacred river, ran/Through caverns measureless to man/Down to a sunless sea./ So twice five miles of fertile ground/With walls and towers were girdled round;/ And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,/Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;/And here were forests ancient as the hills,/Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.//But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted/Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!/A savage place! as holy and enchanted/As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted/By woman wailing for her demon-lover!…[insert song]

Now for an additional segment to this and the next four podcasts: a couple of episodes ago I referred to my former student, friend and collaborator, Mark Dougherty who died unexpectedly on Christmas Day of 2020 in a Belfast hospital. Mark was a talented musician and a musical director in high demand. We collaborated on a jazz suite which he had proposed for his music honours degree at Queens University, Belfast in the mid-1980s. I came up with the idea of a sequence of lyrics exploring various sections of a city newspaper. We called this The Paper Suite and Mark wrote the music and rehearsed a jazz quartet he played keyboards for. The suite was broadcast on BBC Radio Ulster. So here is the opening of that piece that shows Mark’s talent as an arranger for a traditional four-piece unit comprising drums, stand-up bass, tenor sax and keyboards. The song is entitled What’s On in Town. [insert song]

That’s it for another fortnight and I hope you keep well until I return with more news and music from Quotidia.

St James Infirmary (traditional)

It was down in old Joe’s barroom,

on the corner by the square

The drinks were served as usual,

and the usual crowd was there

On my left stood Big Joe McKennedy,

His eyes were bloodshot red

He turned to the crowd around him

These were the very words he said

I went down to St. James infirmary,

To see my baby there

She was stretched out on a long white table,

So sweet, so cool, and so fair

Let her go, let her go, God bless her

Wherever she may be

She may search this whole wide world over

She’ll never find another man as sweet as me

When I die, oh Lord, please bury me

In my high top Stetson hat

Put gold coins over my eyelids

So the boys will know I died standing pat

Get six gamblers to be my pallbearers

Six chorus girls to sing me a song

Put a Jazz band behind my hearse wagon

To raise hell as we roll along

Get sixteen coal black horses

To pull that rubber tired hack

There’s thirteen men going to the graveyard

Only twelve are coming back

Now that you’ve heard my story

Let’s have another round of booze

And if anyone should ask you

I’ve got those St James Infirmary blues

The Blacksmith (Traditional)

A blacksmith courted me nine months or better
He fairly won my heart, wrote me a letter
With his hammer in his hand he looked so clever
And if I were with my love I would live forever

Oh where has my love gone with his cheeks like roses
His good black billycock on, decked with primroses
I’m afraid the shining sun might burn and scorch his beauty
And if I were with my love I would do my duty

Strange news is a-come to town, strange news is carried
Strange news flies up and down that my love is married
Oh I wish them both great joy, though they don’t hear me
And if I were with my love I would do my duty

What did you promise me when you lay beside me
You said you’d marry me and not deny me
If I said I’d marry you twas only for to try you
So bring your witness love and I’ll not deny you

O, witness have I none save God Almighty
And may He reward you well for the slighting of me

Her lips grew pale and wan; it made her poor heart tremble
For to think she had loved one, and he proved deceitful

I Dig (words and music Quentin Bega)

I dig Lana Del Rey and her Technicolor alt-pop

Gregorian chant and Taizé playing non-stop.

Hard bop, smooth jazz, freeform and doo-wop

Let me tell the truth I even like some hip-hop

My ears opened wide when I first heard the Beach Boys

Before than music was a rhythmical nice noise

The Rock revolution provided counterpoise

To what the classics serve up for all our joys

Oh I need a break I need some respite

A pre-chorus line may give me what I need

Before I modulate and provide some insight

Bare my soul so you may see how I bleed

Baby I’m in the mood for whatever love you choose to bring

To consummate what we know is just a heartbeat away

And don’t tell me now that you need some sort of ring

Let’s just have some fun and indulge in our fantasy play

I dig Lana Del Rey and her Technicolor alt-pop

Gregorian chant and Taizé playing non-stop

Hard bop, smooth jazz, freeform and doo-wop

Let me tell the truth I even like some hip-hop

My ears opened wide when I first heard the Beach Boys

Before than music was a rhythmical nice noise

The Rock revolution provided counterpoise

To what the classics serve up for all our joys

What’s On In Town (words Quentin Bega, music Mark Dougherty)

What’s on in town, can you hear the city calling

What’s on in town, listen to the rhythm

Come into town where the bright lights shine on

Belfast Saturday night, what’s on in town

For you might lose your heart tonight

For you can always dream

Of someone who will lead you to heaven

Come and see

What’s on in town, it’s an open invitation

What’s on in town, you don’t need a reason

Come into town, there it is in flashing neon

Belfast Saturday night, what’s on in town

Oh you might lose your heart tonight

For you can always dream

Of someone who will lead you to heaven

Come and see

What’s on in town, can you hear the city calling

What’s on in town, listen to the rhythm

Come on, come into town where the bright lights shine on

Belfast Saturday night, Belfast Saturday night, Belfast Saturday Night

What’s on in town!

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 Quotidia Podcasts 2023 Episode 6

Letters from Quotidia 2023 Podcast 6 The Antique Battle of the Sexes, Old Fool, Maids When You’re Young

Welcome to the sixth podcast of 2023 in the Letters from Quotida sequence. Aprilis, means to open and fits April, because in the northern hemisphere April is the month when trees and flowers begin to bloom and go on to flower. The daisy symbolises innocence, loyal love, and purity; but it also means “I’ll never tell!” The oldest daisy on record is the Bellis perennis, known as Day’s eye in the Middle Ages because its petals close at night to cover the yellow centre.

However, for your April birthday, would you rather be handed a daisy or a diamond (which is the month’s birthstone)? Would you regard the flower as a joke? One that ought only to be played on the first day of the month as an April Fools’ prank, of which, according to Wikipedia, here are a couple of great examples.

In 1956, a rhinoceros called “Cacareco” (Portuguese for “rubbish”) won a city council seat in São Paulo, Brazil with 100,000 votes, due to a campaign led by students who were tired of the city’s mismanagement. In 1957, The BBC television programme Panorama ran a hoax purporting to show the Swiss harvesting spaghetti from trees. They claimed that the despised pest, the spaghetti weevil, had been eradicated. A large number of people contacted the BBC wanting to know how to cultivate their own spaghetti trees. The editor of Panorama at the time, Michael Peacock, approved the idea, which was pitched by freelance camera operator Charles de Jaeger. Peacock said the respected Panorama anchorman Richard Dimbleby knew they were using his authoritativeness to make the joke work. Decades later CNN called this broadcast “the biggest hoax that any reputable news establishment ever pulled”.

Who does not know the opening lines of a famous spring poem by Wordsworth: I wandered lonely as a cloud/That floats on high o’er vales and hills,/When all at once I saw a crowd,/A host, of golden daffodils;/Beside the lake, beneath the trees,/Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.// T. S. Eliot, on the other hand, characterises April as the cruellest month in The Waste Land which begins with a subversion of the first lines of the General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer who paints April as a month of restorative power, when spring rain brings nature back to life: Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote / The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, / And bathed every veyne in swich licóur / Of which vertú engendred is the flour; it’s an image repeated to the point of cliché in subsequent centuries.

But in the wasteland of Eliot’s modern world, amid the ruins of the World War I, the Chaucerian image of a fertile, resurrective April becomes suffused with cruelty. And, at times, I feel as antiquated as one of Eliot’s sad figures walking through The Waste Land. Or, of an even more antique vintage, one of Chaucer’s pilgrims on the way to Canterbury in the 14^th Century. You see, as a person formed from the mid-to late 20^th Century, I was only aware of two sexes or genders (which were synonymous insofar as I could tell), whereas now, there’s more than a handful. Which means that the first song for this post is rather antique- so much so that I have called it The Antique Battle Between the Sexes [insert song]

And which one of us has not been an April Fool? Taken in by one stratagem or another, made mock of by friend or foe? And just as an Old Fogey probably started life as a young one, does a foolish youth ripen in folly to become, with the inexorable passage of time, an Old Fool? These questions were examined in some detail in Letters from Quotidia 49 and I won’t go over all that ground again but will give here a version of the song I wrote on the topic when I became old enough to admit to the stigmatising label myself. But before excoriating myself once more with the words of the song let me dwell a bit on wisdom and folly.

The Bible has quite a lot to tell us about wisdom and folly: Proverbs 16:16 reminds us,How much better to get wisdom than gold, to choose understanding rather than silver! So, then, what choices have you made? If that is awkward, how about what Proverbs 18:7 has to say, a fool’s mouth is his ruin, and his lips are a snare to his soul. Listening, shock jocks? Of course not! Too much gold and silver on offer!

The Fool in King Lear is one of the glories of world literature, Have more than thou showest,/ Speak less than thou knowest,/ Lend less than thou owest,/ Ride more than thou goest,/ Learn more than thou trowest,/Set less than thou throwest. This is not folly, but wise advice. Fools, and other damaged individuals, have licence to speak the unspeakable truth to the mightiest in the land, even though they may face whipping or worse.

The wise fool abounds in literature from antiquity to the 21^st Century. According to Sam Keen in Apology for Wonder, to call a man a fool is not necessarily an insult, for the authentic life has frequently been pictured under the metaphor of the fool. In figures such as Socrates, Christ, and the Idiot of Dostoyevsky we see that foolishness and wisdom are not always what they seem to be. An early example of the wisdom of the fool is found in Plato’s The Republic through the figure of an escaped prisoner in the oft-quoted The Allegory of the Cave.

The escaped prisoner, part of a group imprisoned from birth, returns to free his fellow inmates but is regarded as a madman in his attempts to convince his shackled friends of a greater world beyond the cave. In such a guise let me offer my song Old Fool. [insert song]

Most fools, as we know, are not wise, as is the case with the old man of this traditional folk song I first heard as a teenager in 1967 when Luke Kelly and the Dubliners regaled us with Maids When You’re Young Never Wed an Old Man. The daft censors in the BBC and Radio Eireann eventually tumbled to the content of the ballad and banned the song- but not before it had been heard and throughout the British Isles.

In every place, and at all times, we have laughed scornfully at the sight of old men (usually endowed with plenty of money, if lacking in other areas). We’ve uttered our envy-tinged laughter at these old wrecks who have an attractive, young woman on their arthritic arm. Of course, from the time of Chaucer and before, writers have mined this rich seam for comic content.

In The Miller’s Tale the old carpenter John has to keep a sharp eye on his attractive young wife, Alisoun- and not without cause!- for the young Oxford clerk, Nicholas, whom they have taken in to bolster the household finances casts his lascivious eye on the saucy Alisoun and determines to have his way with her. But he has a young rival in Absolon, the parish clerk, who also lusts after the old carpenter’s wife.

o cut a long story short- Nicholas and Alisoun consummate their illicit affair and play a joke on Absolon who is outside the window at midnight. Instead of her rosy cheek and red lips, Alisoun sticks her backside out the window for the passionate kisses of Absolon, who enraged at the trick runs to a blacksmith’s to grab a red-hot brand. Returning with vengeance in mind he calls out again but instead of Alisoun, Nicholas sticks his rear end out the window and farts thunderously in his face and is branded on the backside by the humiliated Absolon. Perhaps, had you been subjected to the humiliations piled on Absolon, your face, instead of reddening with rage, might have turned a whiter shade of pale- just like the title of the number one hit by Procul Harum in 1967, the same year as the Dubliner’s rollicking song. So, without more ado, here is my version of Maids When You’re Young [insert song]

To conclude this post, let me modulate the tone to one which is pure and unalloyed. And to do so in will quote another poem from Sara Teasdale, called April Song. Willow, in your April gown/Delicate and gleaming,/Do you mind in years gone by/All my dreaming?//Spring was like a call to me/That I could not answer,/I was chained to loneliness,/I, the dancer.//Willow, twinkling in the sun,/Still your leaves and hear me,/I can answer spring at last,/Love is near me!// I hope love is near to us all and ever as I conclude the first of three posts for the ambivalent month we call April.

The Antique Battle Between the Sexes

(words and music by Quentin Bega)

Daisy, won’t you come with me down to the river flowing

It’s there I’ll show my secret heart within the full moon glowing

Oh no sir I am much too wise to heed such talk enchanting

Me mammy warned of smooth-tongued liars in my ears a-planting

Then Daisy won’t you walk with me along the path a-blooming

It’s there I’ll tell my love for you without assent assuming

Oh no sir I am much too weak to put up much resistance

Me mammy warned me not to place myself at your insistence

Proud Daisy you are not the only flower in this wild wood

There’s April, May and June who have indicated they should

Incline their ears to listen to my fervent voice a-wooing

As if I were a turtledove so amorously cooing

Why sir to ravish all the months I know is your ambition

And when you’ve done all that you’ll look for more without contrition

To pluck up all the flowers of the field will be your next task

While all I seek before the world your vile predations unmask

And so the argument proceeds the battle of the sexes

As if between the warring parties there can be no nexus

The wonder of it all is why the population burgeons

You’d almost think that half the world’s comprised of only virgins

Old Fool ( words and music by Quentin Bega)

I’m often told that no fool compares to an old fool

And I concede this rule of thumb applies to me

Since I could walk I’ve fallen down

Since I could talk my foot in mouth

I toss the coin call heads and tails- it lands on its edge

I have been called a multitude of painful names

I won’t detain you long as I recite, as I recall for you this hurtful litany

You are a meathead, sucker, sap, a drongo dupe, a Charlie chump,

You zany rogue, you fathead goose, you waste of space

Get on your bike boy hit the road out of my sight now sling your hook

I’ve had the book thrown at me so many times

I am immune from all your looks of deep disdain

I can absorb your sneers and calumnies, the libels and the lies with equanimity

Philosophers are grave and gray the troubadours sing sweet and gay

The lovers swoon, the soldiers fight, into the night

Professors teach the clergy preach, the businessmen they buy and sell

While doctors seek to make us well-

From shadowland I watch the band of motley as it passes by

The carousel, the spinning top- the whirligig

I’m often told that no fool compares to an old fool

And I concede this rule of thumb applies to me…

Applies to you, applies to us

Maids When You’re Young

(Traditional folk)

An old man came courting me, hey ding-doorum day
An old man came courting me, me being young
An old man came courting me, fain he would marry me
Maids when you’re young never wed an old man

Because he’s got no faloorum, faliddle aye oorum
He’s got no faloorum, faliddle aye ay
He’s got no faloorum, he’s lost his ding-doorum
So maids when you’re young never wed an old man

When we went to church, hey ding-doorum day
When we went to church, me being young
When we went to church, he left me in the lurch
Maids when you’re young never wed an old man

Because he’s got no faloorum, faliddle aye oorum
He’s got no faloorum, faliddle aye ay
He’s got no faloorum, he’s lost his ding-doorum
So maids when you’re young never wed an old man

When we went to bed, hey ding-doorum day
When we went to bed, me being young
When we went to bed, he lay like he was dead
Maids when you’re young never wed an old man

Because he’s got no faloorum, faliddle aye oorum
He’s got no faloorum, faliddle aye ay
He’s got no faloorum, he’s lost his ding-doorum
So maids when you’re young never wed an old man

So I threw me leg over him, hey ding doorum day
I flung me leg over him, me being young
I flung me leg over him damned nearly smothered him
Maids when you’re young never wed an old man.

Because he’s got no faloorum, faliddle aye oorum
He’s got no faloorum, faliddle aye ay
He’s got no faloorum, he’s lost his ding-doorum
So maids when you’re young never wed an old man

When he went to sleep, hey ding-doorum day
When he went to sleep, me being young
When he went to sleep, out of bed I did creep
Into the arms of a handsome young man

And I found his faloorum, faliddle aye oorum
I found his faloorum, faliddle aye ay
I found his faloorum, he’s got my ding-doorum
So maids when you’re young never wed an old man

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.

Letters from Quotidia 2023 Podcast 5

Welcome to the fifth podcast for 2023 of the Letters from Quotidia series. At the conclusion of the last podcast, I promised more March madness. We’re only a few days past the ill-omened Ides of March which put paid to Julius Caesar. According to Eleanor Parker writing in History Today on 3 March 2023, a sequence of ordinary days in late March marked the most important anniversaries in the history of the world. WOW! Which seems to be the ubiquitous, all-purpose response of commentators today to any matter of any level of importance.

This sequence hinges on 25 March, which antique and medieval tradition considered to be the date of the crucifixion. Parker writes: In the Christian calendar Christ’s conception, commemorated by the feast of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary, was also fixed to 25 March, because it was thought appropriate that he should have entered the world on the same date that he died: his life formed a perfect circle, with 25 March both the first and last day of his earthly existence. This date is linked to the beginning of time itself. That special date, 25 March, was pinpointed as the last of the days of creation… on which God rested after completing his work- the end of another significant circle, the world’s first week….Nothing else to celebrate in the last weeks of March? Why not celebrate the birthday of the world.

You know, the way things are going, there might not be a world to wish a happy birthday should any number of –what shall we call them?- bad actors succeed in their insane schemes and diabolical dreams. I think I agree with American poet Robinson Jeffers when he writes, in The End of the World, When I was young in school in Switzerland, about the time of the Boer War,/ We used to take it for known that the human race/Would last the earth out, not dying till the planet died./ I wrote a schoolboy poem/About the last man walking in stoic dignity along the dead shore/Of the last sea, alone, alone, alone, remembering all/His racial past./But now I don’t think so./They’ll die faceless in flocks,/And the earth flourish long after mankind is out.

Of course, for every individual, the day of their death is the end of the world. So it proved for my former student, friend and collaborator, Mark Dougherty on Christmas Day of 2020 in hospital in Belfast. We had been working on a song together inspired by the Edward Hopper 1942 painting, Nighthawks, which is the very emblem of alienation. Here is a song which uses the lyrics we wrote and music I put together. The verses are vignettes from the point of view of three people in the painting- the woman in the red dress, the loner with his back to us, and the guy behind the counter. The verses are disconnected, like the people in the painting, forming no connecting narrative. The chorus exists simply to reinforce the mood the painting conveys: here is Nighthawks (i.m. Mark Dougherty). [insert song]

I will have more to say, in later posts, of our collaboration over the decades we had known one another. As I write this post, Jimmy Carter, one of the most decent men to have occupied high office, as the 39^th President of the United States, has entered hospice care and is living out the final days of his life. In 1979 he gave a speech that, as one commentator has observed, was four decades too early. It is known as the malaise speech- even though this word does not appear in it. Here are excerpts from it: I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy. . . . In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns…We were sure that ours was a nation of the ballot, not the bullet, until the murders of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. We were taught that our armies were always invincible, and our causes were always just, only to suffer the agony of Vietnam. We respected the presidency as a place of honour until the shock of Watergate.

Such was the impact of the speech that his approval rating shot up 11 points! However, the cruelty of history assured that he would be a one-term president. Did he pout and whine about the unfairness of the ballot that installed Ronald Reagan as president? Did he seek to overturn the verdict of the American people? No, he accepted the result and went on to establish the Carter Center with his wife, Rosalynn which promotes global health, democracy, and conflict resolution in the 40-odd years since it was established. If only every president since that time had devoted their remaining years to the betterment of the human condition.

And talking of the human condition, malaise is perhaps the most corrosive. I like the definition of the Cambridge Dictionary– a general feeling of being ill or having no energy, or an uncomfortable feeling that something is wrong, especially with society, and that you cannot change the situation. Feeling hopeless is truly awful and far too many people and far too much value to the world has been lost because so many people have felt that there is nothing to live for- and act upon this belief. One of the songs I am proudest of having written is I Wish I Never Was which I wrote for my musical play, Northern Dreaming, produced in North Queensland in 1991. Here is its latest iteration: [insert song]

Pete Seeger recalls, on performingsongwriter.com of May 3, 2013, how the song, Where Have All the Flowers Gone? came to be written. I had been reading a long novel—”And Quiet Flows the Don”—about the Don River in Russia and the Cossacks who lived along it in the 19th century. It describes the Cossack soldiers galloping off to join the Czar’s army, singing as they go. Three lines from a song are quoted in the book: ‘Where are the flowers? The girls plucked them / Where are the girls? They’re all married / Where are the men? They’re all in the army.’ I never got around to looking up the song, but I wrote down those three lines. Later, in an airplane, I was dozing, and it occurred to me that the line ‘long time passing’—which I had also written in a notebook—would sing well. Then I thought, ‘When will we ever learn.’ Suddenly, within 20 minutes, I had a song. There were just three verses. I Scotch-taped the song to a microphone and sang it at Oberlin College. This was in 1955. One of the students there had a summer job as a camp counsellor. He took the song to the camp and sang it to the kids. It was very short. He gave it rhythm, which I hadn’t done. The kids played around with it, singing ‘Where have all the counsellors gone? / Open curfew, everyone.’ The counsellor added two actual verses: ‘Where have all the soldiers gone? / Gone to graveyards every one / Where have all the graveyards gone? / Covered with flowers every one.’ Joe Hickerson is his name, and I give him 20 percent of the royalties. That song still brings in thousands of dollars from all around the world.”

Pete Seeger, all his life, was a generous guy- as I’m sure Joe Hickerson, among many, many others will attest. Some years ago, Seeger told Tommy Sands, folk singer/songwriter from Northern Ireland, that the tune was taken from an Irish American song about lumberjacks- but slowed down! And by the way, Tommy Sands recorded a brilliant version of the song with Dolores Keane with Arty McGlynn on guitar, Liam O’Flynn on uillean pipes and a haunting children’s choir- worth checking out. I wonder how Pete would react to the present-day situation in Russia. Here is his song- which is as relevant today as when he started to put it together in 1955. [insert song]

To finish, here is a poem entitled Peace by Sara Teasdale, American poet and one of my favourites, Peace flows into me/As the tide to the pool by the shore;/It is mine forevermore,/It ebbs not back like the sea.//I am the pool of blue/That worships the vivid sky;/My hopes were heaven-high,/They are all fulfilled in you.//I am the pool of gold/When sunset burns and dies, —/You are my deepening skies,/Give me your stars to hold. The next post comes your way the day after April Fools’ so, until then: Peace, brothers and sisters, Peace.

Nighthawks (i. m. Mark Dougherty) Quentin Bega and Mark Dougherty

My candle burning slowly since you left me long ago

The flame it flickers now,

The flame it flickers now

As the cold wind shakes the windowpane,

I wore that lovely red dress

When we met in Phillie’s diner,

I remember the guy behind the counter

Called you Mack.

And you just drank your coffee down

The people of the night seek out the company and light

Of kindred souls who gather in the places where they go

To find some consolation that they’re not alone,
They’re not alone…

Late-night coffee ordered and I’m talking to the counterman

As I’ve done before

As I have done before

It’s just something that we do

When in walk a couple

Who sit in gloomy silence

Who sit in silence

So I listen to all the voices on the radio

Which takes me far away

The people of the night seek out the company and light

Of kindred souls who gather in the places where they go

To find some consolation that they’re not alone,
They’re not alone…

I like it best when icy winds clear out these city streets

And I can think again

Oh I can think again…

About her leaving me abandoned

Inside this dismal diner,

While I’m tending to the needs

Of these night hawks as they perch upon their stools

The people of the night seek out the company and light

Of kindred souls who gather in the places where they go
To find some consolation that they are not alone

But then they return to solo lives and beds when everything is done

I Wish I Never Was Words and Music Quentin Bega

Helpless since I can’t remember when

Useless oh I hear that word again

I wonder if at all in this wide world

There’s a place for me

I wonder if it’s possible to be

Alive and free of these chains

Round my heart

I wish I never was someone’s child

Worthless all the promises they made

Hopeless for so long I can’t be saved

All I ever wanted was to live my life

And get along somehow

But all I ever got from anyone was

Lies, deceit, hypocrisy choking my soul

Should have never been born to this world

I try to play the music, but I can’t recall the tune

Why am I abandoned on the dark side of the moon?

Oh I wish I never was someone’s child

I should have never been born to this world

I wish I never was…

Where Have All the Flowers Gone? Pete Seeger

Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing

Where have all the flowers gone? Long time ago

Where have all the flowers gone?

Young Girls have picked them every one

Oh, When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

Where have all the young girls gone? Long time passing

Where have all the young girls gone? Long time ago

 Where have all the young girls gone?

Taken husbands every one

 When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

Where have all the young men gone? Long time passing

Where have all the young men gone? Long time ago

Where have all the young men gone?

Gone for soldiers every one

When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

Where have all the soldiers gone? Long time passing

 Where have all the soldiers gone? Long time ago

Where have all the soldiers gone?

Gone to graveyards every one

When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

Where have all the graveyards gone? Long time passing

Where have all the graveyards gone? Long time ago

Where have all the graveyards gone?  Covered with flowers every one

When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?

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.

LFQ Podcasts 2023 Episode 4

Welcome to Podcasts from Quotidia 2023- Episode 4. This podcast drops on the 5^th of March and what does this portend? As March is named after the Roman god of war, it provokes thoughts of carnage in the northern hemisphere as armies gear up for their campaigns with the return of fighting weather. If you are as mad as a March hare, you may claim a lineage going back centuries, but should your species of madness involve multiple personalities, then today marks the 10^th anniversary of Dissociative Identity Disorder Day.

If you are howling, yowling, yelping, lamenting, groaning moaning, whimpering, weeping, shrieking, sobbing, snivelling, or otherwise indulging in some form of blubbering- then, you are caught in the coils of that universal condition known as crying. In an earlier podcast I wrote: Now, I wouldn’t have pegged the Germans as a particularly lachrymose nation but must admit to being taken aback by the findings of the German Society of Ophthalmology published in 2009 which found that women cry between 30-62 times a year and that men resort to the blub on 6-17 occasions over the same period. I don’t think of myself as a flinty-hearted brute, but I doubt that I would have cried more than once or twice in the past year- if even that! There now, I’ve established my big-boys-don’t-cry credentials which allow me to introduce the first song of this podcast.

It was written in memory of my son, Brian, shortly after we flew to Airlie Beach for my younger daughter’s 18^th birthday in 2009. We had rented a hilltop apartment overlooking the Whitsunday Islands and it was from there, the day before we flew back to Sydney, that we drove north for three hours to be at his graveside. We’ve been back once since then and will probably fly north again this winter just to check that his grave is in proper order. The song is called I Won’t Cry, and Dr Oliver Searle, who curates the site interestingliterature.com, provided me with the perfect poem to accompany the song.

The poem is Beeny Cliff by one of my favourite poets, Thomas Hardy. Dr Searle writes, ‘Beeny Cliff’ belongs to the ‘Poems of 1912-13’ which he wrote in the wake of the death of his first wife, Emma. Although he and Emma had been estranged for many years when she died, her death provoked Hardy to revisit his memories of their life together and to pen some of the finest poems about loss and longing in the English language. He goes on to explain that Beeny is a small hamlet in north Cornwall, near where Emma’s family lived and where she grew up. Hardy remembers Emma riding her pony along the cliff on a blustery March day and how the two of them laughed enjoying a day out in early spring, the sun shining.

Over forty years later when Hardy is an old man looking back on that March day and Emma is no more, he reflects that although Beeny Cliff remains, this does not matter to him, since the woman who accompanied him on that day all those decades earlier is no longer around. Hardy, of course, as an atheist refused to entertain the idea of an afterlife where he and his absent love may meet again. Here is the poem:

O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea,/And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free –/The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me.//The pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far away/In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling say,/As we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear-sunned March day.//A little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew an irised rain,/And the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull misfeatured stain,/And then the sun burst out again, and purples prinked the main.//– Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky,/And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh,/And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and by?/What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore,/The woman now is – elsewhere – whom the ambling pony bore,/And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will laugh there nevermore.//[insert song]

The next song references March as well and is a favourite among folk singers in the English-speaking world. I first heard The Lakes of Ponchartrain on Planxty’s album Cold Blow and the Rainy Night in 1974. The ballad is about a man who is given shelter by a Louisiana Creole woman. He falls in love with her and asks her to marry him, but she is already promised to a sailor and declines. Wikipedia states that it is thought to have originated in the southern United States in the 19^th century. The liner notes which accompany Planxty’s version state that the tune was probably brought back to Ireland by soldiers fighting for the British or French armies in Louisiana and Canada in the War of 1812.

Although the tune might date to that period, the popular lyrics undoubtedly came much later, since they tell of taking a railway train from New Orleans to Jackson Town. This was most likely to be the railway junction town of Jackson, the capital of Mississippi. The line would have been the New Orleans, Jackson and Great Northern Railway—whose line, opened before the Civil War, included a pre-existing local line running north from downtown New Orleans along the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. Most likely, the lyrics date to the Civil War, and the reference to “foreign money” being “no good” could refer to either U.S. or Confederate currency, depending upon who was in control of the area at the time. The Confederacy and Union issued their own bank notes—as did individual States—leading to a proliferation of currency (notes and coinage) that might not be acceptable in a particular region. [insert song]

What is truth? The question of the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate has a more urgent ring in this age- not of information as some would have it- but an age of ChatGPT, deep fakes, troll farms, advertising and political spin. The next song I have put together from various fragments of oral and family history as well as what I have been able to glean from a variety of written sources. The song may also be enhanced- or marred depending on your point of view- with a sprinkling of poetic licence.

But I’ll start with an extract from an article by Henryk K Flostermann in The Explicator of April 1980. Records show that The Dancing House was established on the banks of the Mississippi in the French Quarter of New Orleans in 1816 by an Irish associate of the pirate Jean Lafitte. His name is lost in the mists of time but one source of dubious provenance names him as Ian Chell, an adventurer who fled Ireland after the failed rising of 1798. The same source indicates that he fought in the Battle of New Orleans and, as a reward for services rendered, was given a goodly sum of money with which he established a New World version of the old Irish ‘shebeen”. The structure overlooked the river, and its original name was written in green paint and in Gaelic. It had a notorious reputation and was shut down on several occasions. It passed through several hands in the century that it was in existence. Its use has been variously described as a brothel, a dance venue, a haunt for smugglers and bootleggers, a safe house for the underground railway during the slave years, and a social club for immigrants from various parts of Europe.

A fuller version of this article is found in Letters From Quotidia Episode 80. Family tradition has it that Ian Chell died at the ripe old age of 87 as a result of wounds suffered in a duel over the affections of a woman outside Richmond, Virginia and that he had lived, variously, in New Orleans, Shreveport, Baltimore and Washington DC. So, The Ballad of Ian Chell is a test piece, in a way. My encounter with COVID-19, earlier this year, left me with a psychically draining brain fog that has taken some time to disperse (although my wife tells me that my self-medicating with 12-year-old Scotch may have had something to do with its prolongation.) For better or worse, the creative spark has flared again. [insert song]

That’s all for now, folks, but there will be yet more March madness because I’ll come haring back on 19^th March with another podcast DV. CU then.

I Won’t Cry (Music and words by Quentin Bega)

I rise from the infinity pool- we drive north for three hours to be here with you

I sigh- realise- twenty years since we last spoke

And all I know before I turn to go

I won’t cry anymore

This town- this dusty town -bakes in the sun burning above

We’ve come such a long way- stand almost mute tortured by love

And all I know before I turn to go

I won’t cry anymore

Born to eternal life forevermore

I couldn’t bear the thought that it is nevermore

Forever

South- cane fields so vast- black Burdekin snow a thing of the past

Ash of memory lasts- nothing’s erased yet everything’s lost

And now I know when it’s my time to go

I won’t cry anymore

No, I won’t cry

The Lakes of Ponchartrain (Traditional folk song)

It was one fine March morning I bid New Orleans Adieu
And I took the road to Jackson Town, my fortune to renew
I cursed all foreign money, no credit could I gain
Which filled my heart with a longing for the Lakes of Ponchartrain

I stepped on board of a railroad car beneath the morning sun
I rode the rods till evening, and I laid me down again
All strangers there no friends to me ’til a dark girl towards me came
And I fell in love with the Creole Girl, by the Lakes of Ponchartrain

I said “Me pretty Creole Girl, me money here’s no good,
If it weren’t for the alligators, I’d sleep out there in the wood”
“You’re welcome here kind stranger, from such sad thoughts refrain”
“For me Mammy welcomes strangers, by the Lakes of Ponchartrain”

She took me into her mammy’s house and treated me right well
The hair upon her shoulders in jet black ringlets fell
To try and paint here beauty, I’m sure ‘twould be in vain
So handsome was my Creole girl by the Lakes of Ponchartrain

I asked her if she’d marry me, she said that ne’er could be
For she had got a lover and he was far at sea
She said that she would wait for him and true she would remain
Till he’d return to his Creole girl, on the Lakes of Ponchartrain

It’s fare thee well, me Creole girl, I’ll never see you more
I’ll never forget your kindness in the cottage by the shore
And at each social gathering, a flowing bowl I’ll drain
And I’ll drink a health to my Creole girl, by the Lakes of Ponchartrain

The Ballad of Ian Chell (Music and words by Quentin Bega)

Oh me name is Ian Chell from the Antrim Glens I hail

I joined the United Irishmen my blood was on the boil

At fifteen I found my name had been proclaimed

An outlaw I was on the run across the foamy main

I teamed up with Jean Lafitte aboard his pirate ship

She was a sleek and gallant craft and travelled at a clip

I left her at the southern port they call New Orleans

In time to fight with Andy Jackson and see the redcoats flee

Listen to me I’ve got to be free I still have a lot to give

And if you please between you and me I have a lot more life to live

In the French Quarter near Big Muddy I bought a fine shebeen

The liquor and the women there the finest ever seen

The music and the crack ensured that it would never fail

So I used it as a station of the underground rail

I’ve always hated slavery but my scheme it was betrayed

By a man who loved money over honour I was played

So off I went to make a life among the northern states

I tried my hand at every trade that offered me good rates

Listen to me I’ve got to be free I still have a lot to give

And if you please between you and me I have a lot more life to live

Oh me name is Ian Chell from the Antrim Glens I hail

I’ve seen a lot and been a lot in four score years I say

The Civil War has come and gone and Lincoln too I fear

The people I have loved and lost in memory I keep near

At 80 years of age I have finally settled down

With a good and spirited woman who agrees to keep me round

But every year brings bitterness more than cheer I say

I know that I will not be long to sing this fine refrain!

Listen to me I’ve got to be free I still have a lot to give

And if you please between you and me I have a lot more life to live

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.

Letters from Quotidia the Podcasts 2023 Episode 3

Letters from Quotidia Podcast 3 2023

Welcome to Podcasts from Quotidia 2023- Episode 3. And right away- a broken promise- and this after a string of broken New Year’s resolutions! At the end of Podcast 2 I said: I solemnly promise that my next podcast will seek to avoid roads and the old West and, furthermore, I undertake to restrain the urge to cover Desperado.

Yet the first song of this post is one called Autumn Road. In mitigation, the topic could not be avoided for the following reason: I felt, on reflection, that, at the conclusion of the last post, it was rather perverse to mention the name of Basho; quote, at length, from his travel book, The Narrow Road to the Deep North; and yet, fail to include a single haiku! Basho, of course, is a master of the form and he inspired the first song you will hear.

A redoubtable gentleman named Reginald Horace Blythe introduced this poetic trope to Western audiences in four volumes published between 1949 and 1952. He had this to say: A haiku is not a poem, it is not literature; it is a hand beckoning, a door half-opened, a mirror wiped clean. It is a way of returning to nature, to our moon nature, our cherry blossom nature, our falling leaf nature, in short, to our Buddha nature. It is a way in which the cold winter rain, the swallows of evening, even the very day in its hotness, and the length of the night, become truly alive, share in our humanity, speak their own silent and expressive language.

Very eloquently put, Reggie old boy. What interests me about this definition is that, after stating that a haiku is not a poem, he goes on to define it in terms that are very reminiscent of definitions of poetry that I have come across over the decades. The poem as a doorway or mirror or deep expression of our humanity or a path to our imaginative self or to the natural world are conceits not unknown to the history of western poetics. I would like you to listen to these 10 haiku by Basho. They provided much of the content to my song- so I shall be very happy to give Matsuo Basho a co-writing credit :

1. Along this road/Goes no one/This autumn evening.//2. Moonlight slants through/ The vast bamboo grove:/ A cuckoo cries//3.From time to time/The clouds give rest/To the moon beholders.//4. Ah, summer grasses!/All that remains/Of the warriors’ dreams.//5.The butterfly is perfuming/Its wings in the scent/Of the orchid.//6.The old pond/A frog jumps in/The sound of water.//7.Yes, spring has come/This morning a nameless hill/Is shrouded in mist.//8. It is deep autumn/My neighbour/How does he live, I wonder.//9. The temple bell dies away/The scent of flowers in the evening/Is still tolling the bell.// The last haiku of Basho, himself, as he lay dying, surrounded by his disciples also predicates a road: 10. Falling ill on a journey/ my dreams go wandering/over withered fields.

These resonating bells, and butterflies, and blossoms, were the inspiration for the song, Autumn Road which first appeared in an earlier post but which I have re-recorded here because I felt a more subdued instrumentation would be a better fit than the folk/country rock original. [insert song]

And, furthermore, I undertake to restrain the urge to cover Desperado you will, perhaps, remind me. And why, you may ask, couldn’t I restrain the urge to cover the song? Let me explain: I first heard the song about 50 years ago: the song was written by Don Henley and Glenn Frey of The Eagles. Re-reading the lyrics recently, I was snagged by lines such as, these things that are pleasin’ you can hurt you somehow, and, desperado, oh you ain’t getting no younger, and, you’re losing all your highs and lows ain’t it funny how the feeling goes away.

Good Lord, these lines hit home now in a way they just didn’t half a century ago. And finally, in my opinion, this song is one of the greats and such an accomplishment for young songwriters who were just a year or two older than me back in 1973 when they penned this ballad in their mid-20s. But before I present my version, let me give a little background- this is from the site songfacts.com

Country music is filled with songs that look beyond the archetype to show the nuanced emotions of a cowboy, but “Desperado” was a touchstone in bringing this kind of song to the rock genre…Linda Ronstadt recorded this song and released it on her 1973 album Don’t Cry Now. Ronstadt was a once-in-a-generation singer who was well known in the industry…Ronstadt’s “Desperado” wasn’t released as a single, but it exposed the song to a much wider (mostly female) audience. “I was extremely flattered that Linda recorded ‘Desperado,'” Don Henley said. “It was really her that popularised the song. Her version was very poignant and beautiful.”…This was the last song the Eagles performed in concert with Glenn Frey. It closed out their show in Bossier City, Louisiana on July 29, 2015, the last stop on their History of the Eagles tour. Frey died about six months later.

And there is the circle, from the meeting with Don Henley in 1970 which led to the collaboration that resulted in the song Desperado, until that final song in concert in Louisiana 45 year later. The Eagles are revered and hated in about equal measure! The vituperation I have read while preparing this part of the post has taken me aback and I will do no more than refer to it in passing. All I can say, is that Desperado helped my wife and me bond in our first years in Australia when times were…a little tough.

And of course, I reach for poetry to amplify and enlighten the topics I canvass in these posts, so I turn now to James Weldon Johnson, born in Florida in 1871, who was a national organiser for the NAACP and an author of poetry and nonfiction. Perhaps best known for the song Lift Every Voice and Sing, he also wrote several poetry collections and novels, often exploring racial identity and the African American folk tradition. (Thanks to Poets.org for this information.) He wrote a poem that I think fits called The Gift to Sing: Sometimes the mist overhangs my path,/And blackening clouds about me cling;/But, oh, I have a magic way/To turn the gloom to cheerful day—/I softly sing.//And if the way grows darker still,/Shadowed by Sorrow’s sombre wing,/With glad defiance in my throat,/I pierce the darkness with a note,/And sing, and sing.//I brood not over the broken past,/Nor dread whatever time may bring;/No nights are dark, no days are long,/While in my heart there swells a song,/ And I can sing. [insert song]

Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoller’s famous words- and when you hear them, you’ll recognise them- are inscribed on a panel in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C.. They are the final words read by visitors and serve as an indictment of passivity and indifference during the Holocaust.

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist./Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist./Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew./Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.//

Forty years after Niemoller wrote these remorseful words, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd with lyricist Anthony Moore composed On the Turning Away which had an immediate and lasting impact on me when I heard it on the 1987 LP A Momentary Lapse of Reason. And this song still serves, 36 years later, as a reminder that none of us should become part of the turning away from the rampant injustice in our world. I had intended to write an original song on this theme, but I fear I am still recovering from some of the mental and physical sequela of my encounter with COVID-19 recently.

Creativity and brain fog are not boon companions- as I discovered when all I produced was a weak, insipid dribble when I tried. Still, the final song is a more than worthy substitute. Lines from Sick Room by Billy Collins makes my point: Every time Canaletto painted Venice/he painted her from a different angle,/sometimes from points of view he must have imagined/for there is no place in the city/he could have stood to observe such scenes/…I am not Canaletto/and this airless little room,/with its broken ceiling fan,/ and monstrous wallpaper, is not Venice. Yes. Precisely so!

Autumn Road words inspired by Basho Music Quentin Bega

On an Autumn Road a lonely traveller stands unshod

As the night draws in and the wind is whistling

There’s a winding track leading to a running brook

Where the cypress trees throw their shadows in the stream

The moon wraps night-cloud about her shining form

I cry show your face light me on the way I need to go

Dreams of summer grass captains understand at last

That the butterfly and the orchid will survive

In a mossy pond still reflections you will find

Then a frog leaps in water splashes all around

The moon wraps night-cloud about her shining form

I now comprehend darkness brings release to tired minds

Hear the temple bell sound that blossoms in the dusk

Does my neighbour hear as it tolls into the frost

Does he remember Spring mist-covered nameless hill

Birdsong in the sky

On an Autumn road a simple traveller stands alone

The Eagles 1973 “Desperado” (Glenn Frey and Don Henley)

G G7 C Cm G Em A7 D7

G G7 C Cm

Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses

G Em

You’ve been out ridin’ fences,

A7 D7

for so long – now.

G G7

Oh you’re a hard one.

C Cm

I know that you’ve got your reasons.

G Em

These things that are pleasin’ you

A7 D7 G D

Can hurt you somehow.

Em Bm

Don’t you draw the queen of diamonds boy

C G

She’ll beat you if she’s able.

Em C G D

You know the queen of hearts is always your best bet.

Em Bm

Now it seems to me, some fine things

C G

Have been laid upon your table.

Em A7

But you only want the ones

Am D

That you can’t get.

Desperado,

G7 C Cm

Ohhhh you ain’t getting no younger.

G Em

Your pain and your hunger,

A7 D7

They’re driving you home.

G G7

And freedom, oh freedom.

C Cm

Well that’s just some people talking.

G Em A7 D7 G D

Your prison is walking through this world all alone.

Em Bm

Don’t your feet get cold in the winter time?

C G

The sky won’t snow and the sun won’t shine.

Em C G D

It’s hard to tell the night time from the day.

Em Bm

And you’re losing all your highs and lows

C G

ain’t it funny how the feeling goes

Am D D7

away…

Desperado,

G7 C Cm

Why don’t you come to your senses?

G Em A7 D7

come down from your fences, open the gate.

G G7 C Cm

It may be rainin’, but there’s a rainbow above you.

G Em

You better let somebody love you.

C Am

(let somebody love you)

G B7 Em

You better let somebody love you…ohhh..hooo

Am D7 G

before it’s too..oooo.. late.

G7 C Cm G

On the Turning Away words by Anthony Moore music David Gilmour

On the turning away

From the pale and downtrodden

And the words they say

Which we won’t understand

“Don’t accept that what’s happening

Is just a case of others’ suffering

Or you’ll find that you’re joining in

The turning away

(Em) (D) G

It’s a sin that somehow

C Em

Light is changing to shadow

D G

And casting its shroud

Over all we have known

Em C G

Unaware how the ranks have grown

Em G C

Driven on by a heart of stone

G C Em

We could find that we’re all alone

D G

In the dream of the proud

Em D G

On the wings of the night

C Em

As the daytime is stirring

D G

Where the speechless unite

In a silent accord

Em C G

Using words you will find are strange

Em G C

And mesmerized as they light the flame

G C

Feel the new wind of change

Em D G

On the wings of the night

Em D C

Em D Am

C D Am

C D Em

Em D G

No more turning away

C Em

From the weak and the weary

Em D G

No more turning away

From the coldness inside

Em C G

Just a world that we all must share

Em G C

It’s not enough just to stand and stare

G C Em

Is it only a dream that there’ll be

D G

No more turning away?

Technical Stuff: Microphone- Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used, from time to time, for songs and spoken text.

Letters From Quotidia the Podcasts 2023 Episode 2

For the second podcast of 2023, let us talk roads: in the trailer for these Letters from Quotidia podcasts, I featured Walt Whitman’s The Song of the Open Road and the famous song, Route 66. In that first podcast for the year, we encountered Edward Thomas’s road under the trees…where the leaflets out of the ash-tree shed/ Are thinly spread/ In the road, like little black fish, inlaid/ As if they played. Similarly, Amy Lowell’s Roads inspired the first original song of 2023 with the same name. Well, you may forget about Robert Frost’s mischievous, the road not taken but there are more roads to travel, I fear, before I will tire of the theme. Fiction offers some interesting examples: if you are shopping for a magic wand, where better for your diligent search than Diagon Alley? Should you be an overly ambitious suburban developer, your plans will be crisscrossed with paper streets which exist nowhere but in your avaricious mind and on your still-born plans. The cartographers among you will ensure that trap streets are tucked in among your painstakingly charted thoroughfares to ensnare the plagiarists who infest your industry. And how many of your children have yearned to reside at 742 Evergreen Terrace with Homer and Marge? Now, let us leave these Yellow Brick Roads of our imagination and tread along some Biblical tracks. The New Testament offers some dramatic examples; the Via Dolorosa in the old city of Jerusalem, for example is the path taken by Jesus on his way to the Crucifixion. Catholic churches throughout the world memorialise this event by the 14 Stations of the Cross found in or near the building. The Road to Damascus was the site of what Christians believe to be one of the most portentous events of human history where a man, Saul by name, commences the journey as a fierce and murderous opponent of the nascent movement known as The Way and emerges as Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles whose travels around the Mediterranean and environs still provoke wonder at their scope and duration. The Road to Emmaus, on the other hand, provides a quiet and contemplative counterpoint to the Damascene example. And I know, if I had a choice, that I would choose this road rather than that followed by the man who undertook a trip from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell in among thieves! To kick off the music component of the podcast I need to take us back to 1965 where The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan loomed large in the UK charts and The Byrds offered Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man as the phantasmagorical harbinger of the psychedelic movement. As I have admitted, with some embarrassment, in earlier podcasts, I threw in my lot with these shaggy-haired artists and eschewed my previous affinity with country music. So, then who is this clean-cut guy, with a suit and tie, well-trimmed hair touting a classic three-chord country song in swinging eights complete with a semi-tone modulation to get to the bridge and second half of the song? Why, it’s Roger Miller, and he’s singing King of the Road which reached number one on both sides of the Atlantic that year! I knew on a first hearing that it was a great song. Now that I’ve left the foolish partisanship of my mid-teens long behind, may I, somewhat belatedly, present this gem of a song? [insert song] At this time, too, I set sail as a journeyman songwriter but before I regale you with my latest essay as a writer of love songs let me venture down a few more roads in verse, song, prose, and popular culture. The Canning Highway in Western Australia runs from Fremantle, the long-time residence of Bon Scott of AC/DC and culminates in the Perth suburb of Victoria- a 17-kilometre four lane divided carriageway. Apparently, there was a grungy 1970s booze barn in Victoria called The Raffles where Bon would go to drink and rock out with his mates. Close to the pub there is a steep incline and accident black spot where the number of fatalities earned it the soubriquet- highway to hell. Well, that’s one story. Brian Johnston, successor vocalist in AC/DC after Bon’s death claims that it was about driving across the Nullarbor Plain from Melbourne to Perth, as Bon had done several times, into the glare of the merciless setting sun. I’ve been driving for well over 50 years and in my time, I’ve driven over roads that would qualify for the title, highway to hell and I’m sure many of you could say the same. Chris Rea in 1989 released his masterpiece, The Road to Hell, which I still listen to for its insight and power. Here are its opening lines: Stood still on a highway/I saw a woman/By the side of the road/ With a face that I knew like my own/Reflected in my window/Well she walked up to my quarterlight/And she bent down real slow/A fearful pressure paralyzed me/in my shadow//She said “Son, what are you doing here?/My fear for you has turned me in my grave”/I said “Mama, I come to the valley of the rich/Myself to sell”/She said “Son, this is the road to Hell”//On your journey ‘cross the wilderness/From the desert to the well/You have strayed upon the motorway to Hell// At some distance in time and space from the motorway to hell of Chris Rea, is Crossroads. Written by Robert Johnston, bluesman extraordinaire, in 1936 and popularised thirty years later by Eric Clapton, guitarist extraordinaire, it has attracted that apocryphal story about Johnston selling his soul to the devil in exchange for his guitar chops- all nonsense, of course, but why let the facts get in the way of a good story. Among the most enduring stories of the road in the 20^th Century are those of the truck drivers who criss-cross nations and continents delivering the goods that keep the economy humming along like those multi-wheeled rigs that flash by with artwork inspired by angels and demons. I wrote this next song in 1981. It looks backwards to the late 1960s and 1970s and features CB radios, lava glitter lamps, a little lady keeping house, reading escapist fiction, and bored out of her brain. Her husband is a trucker with a macho moniker and love of the game of darts. It would score no points from the #MeToo movement, and rightly so, but I present it as a snapshot of a time that is trapped in the aspic of the misogynistic past. Here, with apologies, is, The Goodtimes of Doris and Ronnie. [insert song]. On March 29, 1689, the Japanese writer, Matsuo Basho, set out with a companion on a journey which took more than 150 days and covered 2,400 kilometres or almost fifteen hundred miles. Here are the opening lines to his great travel book, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, translated by Donald Keene. The months and days are the travellers of eternity. The years that come and go are also voyagers. Those who float away their lives on ships or who grow old leading horses are forever journeying, and their homes are wherever their travels take them. Many of the men of old died on the road, and I too for years past have been stirred by the sight of a solitary cloud drifting with the wind to ceaseless thoughts of roaming. Last year I spent wandering along the seacoast. In autumn I returned to my cottage on the river and swept away the cobwebs. Gradually the year drew to its close. When spring came and there was mist in the air, I thought of crossing the Barrier of Shirakawa into Oku. I seemed to be possessed by the spirits of wanderlust, and they all but deprived me of my senses. The guardian spirits of the road beckoned, and I could not settle down to work. I patched my torn trousers and changed the cord on my bamboo hat. To strengthen my legs for the journey I had moxa burned on my shins. By then I could think of nothing but the moon at Matsushima when I sold my cottage and moved to Sampū’s villa, to stay until I started on my journey. Brilliant though this language is, it doesn’t tug at my heartstrings the way the imagery, novels and songs of the American West have done since I was a child. I consumed westerns avidly in both book and movie form and I still wish someone would come along and write something like Larry McMurtry’s great Lonesome Dove series. It is out of these inchoate yearnings of my soul that I came to write yet another song for my wife toward the end of January this year. The song is called The Open Range and Road, and in it I refer to the first song I wrote at age 16 in 1965. At that time, I had just finished a reading jag where I devoured, for reasons I still can scarcely comprehend, the novels in the Sudden series written by Oliver Strange who died in 1952. They are classified as Piccadilly Westerns, so-called because they were written by British authors who derived their inspiration from- who knows where?- but certainly not any first-hand knowledge of the American West. And, while I recognised that they were less than literary, they appealed to my adolescent puerile soul- captured, as it was, by the grand mythos of the old West of America. Here, then, is my latest love song, The Open Range and Road. [insert song] I solemnly promise that my next podcast will seek to avoid roads and the old West and, furthermore, I undertake to restrain the urge to cover Desperado. As a final thought, one of the guitarists I have admired since his days in the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck, died last month unexpectedly and it resonated with me because, at about the same time, my wife and I were laid low by COVID-19 and, while thanks to four vaccines shots we had eagerly taken up over the past couple of years, and in spite of our age and co-morbidities, we avoided hospitalisation and were back on our feet within a week or so. Still, it made me think of that old Irish blessing, May the road rise up to meet you,/May the wind always be at your back,/May the sun shine warm upon your face,/And rains fall soft upon your fields,/And, until we meet again,/May God hold you in the palm of His hand.//

Song lyrics in the podcast

“King of The Road” (1965)

by Roger Miller

A D

Trailers for sale or rent,

E A

Rooms to let fifty cents,

A D

No phone, no pool, no pets.

I ain’t got no cigarettes.

A D

Ah, but…two hours of pushin’ broom,

E A

Buys an…eight-by-twelve four-bit room.

A D

I’m a man of means by no means,

E A

King of the road.

A D

Third boxcar, midnight train,

E A

Destination Bangor, Maine.

A D

Old worn out suit and shoes,

I don’t pay no union dues.

A D

I smoke…old stogies I have found,

E A

Short, but not too big around.

A D

I’m a man of means by no means,

E A

King of the road.

(Key change from A to Bb)

[Bridge]

Bb Eb

I know…every engineer on every train,

F Bb

All their children, ‘n all of their names,

Bb Eb

And…every handout in every town,

And…every lock that ain’t locked when no one’s around.

Bb Eb

I sing…trailers for sale or rent,

F Bb

Rooms to let, fifty cents,

Bb Eb

No phone, no pool, no pets.

I ain’t got no cigarettes.

Bb Eb

Ah, but…two hours of pushin’ broom,

F Bb

Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room.

Bb Eb

I’m a…man of means by no means,

F Bb

King of the road.

[Outro] (bass only)

Bb Eb

Trailers for sale or rent,

F Bb

Rooms to let, fifty cents,

Bb Eb

No phone, no pool, no pets.

I ain’t got no cigarettes.

Bb Eb

Ah, but, two hours of pushin’ broom,

F Bb

Buys an eight by twelve four-bit room…

The Goodtimes of Doris and Ronnie

Doris pulls the blinds as she blinks another morning

A day can last all week long

Thinks about the Teasmade promised for her birthday

And hums a current hit song

Doris, she believes in magic

(We all need magic in our lives)

Doris, she reads Denis Wheatley

And the Devil rides out once again

She saw her Ronnie drive off as the dawn was breaking

CB chat filling the air

Doris, she recalls the afternoon she met him

She was a young girl with flair

Ronnie was a handsome creature

She squealed excitedly and said

Ronnie treat me like a flower

So he plucked her where they lay

Doris switches on the glitter lamp he gave her

Watching colours collide

Ronnie won that prize with the last dart of the evening

He still remembers it with pride

And he told all the truckers

Ears on now the Devil has some news

I throw a mean set of arrows

Come play me if you choose or you dare

Doris lays the table sets the stove to simmer

Her day has passed in a haze

Sometimes she regrets the loneliness she faces

With Ronnie gone so many days

But there are compensations

Yes! so she reckons now and then

She hears that diesel rumble

As the Devil rides home once again

Open Range and Road

Sitting here with the Spanish guitar you bought for me so many years ago

Across my old lap I pluck at these fine familiar chords again

At 16 I wrote my first song for you and sighing wished that it was better

This first song for you in 2023 has me sighing just as much

Such thoughts go streaming out across my mind as bison across the Great Plains

Or a Thunderbird chasing the setting sun from Las Vegas to LA

Away spin these similes in a losing dance to capture my love for you

Like a parched man staggers in the desert sun in search of water to survive

Such thoughts go streaming out across my mind as bison across the Great Plains

Or a Thunderbird chasing the setting sun from Las Vegas to LA

Away I must follow these wayward thoughts on the open range and the open road

That my mind spreads out like a tapestry woven with my love for you

(So, I must follow this open range and this open road to find my love for you)