Letters from Quotidia 2025 Weekend Supplement 11

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia 2025, Weekend Supplement 11. As Northern Hemispherians rug up for the impending winter chill, here in balmy Quotidia the temperature is rising. November, proverbially, is a gloomy month and, so, is the appropriate setting for the songs in this supplement.

What is the appeal of sad songs? Bernie Taupin supplied an answer in his lyric to Elton John’s great Sad Songs (Say So Much) back in 1984- The kick inside is in the line/That finally gets to you/ And it feels so good to hurt so bad/ And suffer just enough to sing the blues// And we have all felt that kick inside when a line of poetry or of song articulates the inchoate anguish we are feeling. The delineation of that dreadful emotional churn we are caught up in has a cathartic effect (yes, the Greeks, as always, have a word for it!).

Of course, as every human heart is unique, what pierces one will bounce off the next and so it would be futile to give examples that may resonate with me but leave you cold. However, I think what English poet A. E. Housman had to say in a short two-quatrain poem, They Say My Verse Is Sad, published in 1936 says much the same thing as Bernie Taupin’s lines: They say my verse is sad, no wonder./ Its narrow measure spans/ Rue for eternity, and sorrow/ Not mine, but man’s.// This is for all ill-treated fellows/ Unborn and unbegot,/ For them to read when they’re in trouble/ And I am not.// In Psalm 34 we find the line, The Lord is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

But no amount of consoling text or tune can cure the just jilted or those freshly blindsided by betrayal. It takes time. You know, the healer. Hard to believe it at the time, but the cliché has currency because there is truth in it. None of this closure malarkey, as a previous president of the US would say, but a personal accommodation with the loss that is as varied as the people who lose someone they love- whether figuratively or for real.

Some years ago I used to rate sites like YouTube and Spotify somewhat highly but of late they seem to be increasingly infested with AI slop (as I believe digital garbage is referred to). More often than not, I will close a YouTube site within seconds because it is execrable. Spotify is worse, if anything, virtually unlistenable. Which is why I have tended in past months to select my viewing and listening carefully, trying to curate sites that are authentic.

One such site featured Billy Strings and Bryan Sutton at the American Legion Post 82 in Nashville earlier this year. In the last weekend supplement, I covered a song they sang there- Two Soldiers– I hasten to add that theirs was such a great rendition. At the same venue they sang a Blaze Foley tune that really appealed to me. So listen now to Cold, Cold World, a simple, sad and beautiful song and, well, I will attempt to do it justice [insert song]

What was I then, after listening to and recording the Foley song. Inspired? Compelled! All I know was, I sat in front of the blinking cursor on the blank screen and started to type. Two thirds of the song was out in as much time as it took to rattle it out of the keyboard. The rest came almost as quickly. Apart from tidying up a clunky simile in the second line and replacing a working title that was weak, the song was finished.

quickly found a few folk chords to fit- and recorded the result. Running a satisfied, post-compositional eye over it I could hear in my mind’s ear my wife exclaiming- yet another doleful dirge, eh? And so began a critical exchange in the safe confines of my imagination (I mean, I’m no fool!): Hey, what do you expect, another My Way? Well, we could certainly use the money. Even in my imagination she knows what buttons to push as I retort, Sorry but I can’t write from the point of view of a sociopath! I mean, a full life lived with so few regrets that they’re not worth mentioning!

And so it goes, but only in fantasy because I actually managed to hold my own in the disputation. Pablo Neruda’s poetry appeals to me-I have quoted him before in the Letters. He has a well-known poem which starts, Tonight I can write the saddest lines. W. S. Merwin, another poet whose insights I have availed myself of also in previous Letters, has a wonderful translation of which I will quote the opening 10 lines, Tonight I can write the saddest lines. / Write, for example. “The night is starry, and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.”/ The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. / Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her and sometimes she loved me too. / Through nights like this one I held her in my arms. I kissed her again and again under the endless sky. / She loved me, sometimes I loved her too, / How could one not have loved her great still eyes. / Tonight I can write the saddest lines… Now to my latest song, I call it Angel Statues. [insert song]

The twelfth weekend supplement will appear towards the year’s end. While Christmas cheer may not be so evident in what’s laughingly referred to as the real world, I will try to find a topic less lugubrious than the theme of this Letter. So, to set the tone here are two Limericks. The first by Anonymous, There was an old man of Nantucket / Who kept all his cash in a bucket; / But his daughter, named Nan, / Ran away with a man, / And as for the bucket, Nantucket. // Oliver Wendell Holmes offer this; God’s plan made a hopeful beginning. / But man spoiled his chances by sinning. / We trust that the story / Will end in God’s glory. / But at present the other side’s winning. Alas, true, but at Yuletide- let’s cheer for glory.

Cold, Cold World (words and music Blaze Foley)

I’ve tried for a long time but I think I can’t win

I’d do it all better if I could do it a-gain

Wherever I’m going it’s the same place I been

Ain’t it a cold, cold world

Outside it was hot but inside I am cold

The eyes of the young met the eyes of the old

And what they were thinking I’ll never be told

Ain’t it a cold, cold world

Then an old lady asked me ‘bout this new daylight time

I said it don’t matter and she said I don’t mind

Then the bus driver said you still owe me a dime

Ain’t it a cold, cold world

I can’t get no job and I can’t get no rest

I started out east and I ended up west

And I’m so glad to be here I’m sure, I would guess

Ain’t it a cold, cold world

(instrumental verse)

I might have to leave you, I think’s what she said

Wish I could sleep ‘stead of tossing in bed

And I find myself thinking I’d be better off dead

Ain’t it a cold, cold world

Ain’t it a cold, cold world

Angel Statues (words and music by Quentin Bega)

  C                                                     Am                                Em                       G

I lost my first-born son and lost the first damn song I wrote about him

C                                                                           Am                     Em                              G 

Losses down the years and decades pile up like debris in some dark alley

F                                                                                                                         G

Ever known a crying man without an actual working plan to save him

             F                                                                                                                         G

From spinning round a sucking drain that’s trying its level best to drown him

           C                                                      Am                          Em                               G

Well if you do congrats to you collect your lucky trap-door prize beneath you

           C                                                 Am             Em                             G

And as you fall into the pit of endless regret and endless what-ifs

F                                                                                                           G

Will you stare into the glass seeing a fading ghost before you

F                                                                                                                   G

Will you invent another place where you can go to to be happy

C                                             Am                        Em                     G

Pay the tariff if you can drink another rotgut wine to warm you

C                                                                Am                            Em                     G

Dream of castles in the clouds stumble out the tavern door at midnight

F                                                                                                                            G

Rinse and repeat you promise as you take a fond farewell of no one

F                                                                                                                        G

Hear the angel statues inside the graveyard singing as you pass by

Dm                           G                       Dm                      G      Dm                          G                          C

Hear the angels sing they’re singing just for you hear the angels singing as you pass by

Dm                           G                       Dm                      G      Dm                          G                          C

Hear the angels sing they’re singing just for you hear the angels singing as you pass by

Dm                           G                       Dm                      G      Dm                          G                          C

Hear the angels sing they’re singing just for you hear the angels singing as you pass… by

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

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