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 39th 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,
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?
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.
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