Letters from Quotidia 2023 Podcast 16

Welcome to the first podcast of the month of August 2023, which happens to be the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945. Exactly one year ago, I commemorated this day by featuring five songs dealing with that event in Letters from Quotidia Postscripts 9. Four of the songs had featured in previous posts, and one was a cover of the folk song- Morning Dew.

I wrote then, “Canadian folk-singer Bonnie Dobson wrote the song after seeing the 1959 black-and-white film On the Beach The film depicts the aftermath of a nuclear war. The final scene shows, and thanks, Wikipedia, for this dramatic sentence: The empty windblown streets of Melbourne are punctuated by the rise of dramatic, strident music over a single powerful image of a previously seen Salvation Army street banner: “There is still time … Brother”.

Bonnie wrote the song, Morning Dew, the first of her career-and what a first!- after friends she was staying with in L.A. went to bed. It has been covered by a wide range of artists. It was first released in 1961. She is still going strong this year, rousing audiences in Britain at the age of 83, what a woman, eh? The song has universal themes- which I will not insult you by explicating here- the 21-year-old Bobbie Dobson set it out as clear as the morning dew.” Well, I’m reprising it here one year later.

As I was researching material for this podcast, I came across a poem by Sankichi Toge, August 6, translated by Karen Thornber. SankichI Toge (1917 – 1953) was a Japanese poet, activist, and survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. His collection ‘Poems of the Atomic Bomb’ was published in 1951. I found it on the site cnduk.org. can we forget that flash?/suddenly 30,000 in the streets-disappeared in the crushed depths of darkness/the shrieks of 50,000 died out//when the swirling yellow smoke thinned/buildings split, bridges collapsed/packed trains rested singed/and a shoreless accumulation of rubble and embers – Hiroshima/before long, a line of naked bodies walking in groups, crying/with skin hanging down like rags/hands on chests/stamping on crumbled brain matter/burnt clothing covering hips//corpses lie on the parade ground like stone images of Jizo, dispersed in all directions/on the banks of the river, lying one on top of another, a group that had crawled to/a tethered raft//also gradually transformed into corpses beneath the sun’s scorching rays/and in the light of the flames that pierced the evening sky/the place where mother and younger brother were pinned under alive/also was engulfed in flames/and when the morning sun shone on a group of high-school girls/who had fled and were lying on the floor of the armoury, in excrement/their bellies swollen, one eye crushed, half their bodies raw flesh with skin ripped/off, hairless, impossible to tell who was who/all had stopped moving/in a stagnant, offensive smell/the only sound the wings of flies buzzing around metal basins//city of 300,000/can we forget-that-silence?/in-that-stillness/the powerful appeal/of the white eye sockets of the wives and children who did not return home/that tore apart our hearts/can it be forgotten?!// [insert song]

Can it be forgotten? The final line of the poem, August 6.It should never be forgotten. Though, who will tell those psychotic clowns who are threating the use of these obscene devices in Ukraine, Korea and elsewhere? Now, to matters more infused with what makes life worth living- love, in all of its variations.

Three years ago, in June 2020, during COVID-19 lockdown I recorded a wonderful love song written by Barney Rush and popularised by Christy Moore who had met Barney in 1969 in Jersey. “Barney explained it to me,” Christy recalls. “When he was writing this love song, he needed a name to tie it all together. Nancy Spain was a famous English journalist back in the 1960s, and Barney really liked the sound of her name. That was the name he chose for the subject of his song.” Nancy Spain was no ordinary journalist, but one promoted as a free-roaming controversialist by The Daily Express which declared proudly, if somewhat feverishly: “They call her vulgar. . . they call her the worst dressed woman in Britain. . .”And the reason “they” found her badly dressed may have had more to do with the repressions of the 1950s than with Nancy Spain’s own sense of style. In her public appearances on TV shows such as What’s My Line? she tended to favour “natty gents’ sportswear” and what they called “mannish” clothes.

Nancy Spain was, in fact, a lesbian. And it is said that she had many affairs with other women, including Marlene Dietrich. All of which was apparently accepted in good spirit by her soulmate Laurie. The two women even died together when the light aircraft in which they were travelling to the 1964 Grand National crashed into a cabbage field near Aintree racecourse. Noel Coward wrote that “it is cruel that all that gaiety, intelligence and vitality should be snuffed out, when so many bores and horrors are left living.” Well, Noel, old boy, the rain falls on the good and evil alike, as I think an itinerant preacher put it in Palestine a while back. (I got this info from an article by Declan Lynch writing in The Irish Independent, October 4, 2014) and her Wikipedia entry.)

After Rosalita and Jack Campbell, this is my most downloaded song. I think Nancy Spain would have been mightily amused to think that her name is used as the title of this love song. [insert song]

I will end this podcast with a song that is sort of like a lullaby. I imagine a mother reassuring her child that all will be well even though events unfolding in the world around might suggest that all may not be well. And I’ll preface it with a verse or two from one of my go-to poets- Walt Whitman. Several posts ago I used the first section from his profound and magisterial poem, Poem of the Open Road, Here is the second section of that poem that I think fits in well with the themes I am exploring,

You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here, I believe that much unseen is also here.//Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,/The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the illiterate person, are not denied;/The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the drunkard’s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,/The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,//The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back from the town,/They pass, I also pass, any thing passes, none can be interdicted,/None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.

And, from section six of that poem, Here is the test of wisdom,/Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,/Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it,/Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,/Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,/Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things;/Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.//

And talking of wisdom, in Job we find, Is not wisdom found among the aged? Does not long life bring understanding? You would hope so but listen to some of the geriatric bloviating emanating from so many of our ageing politicians, shock jocks, and assorted long-in-the-tooth looney tunes and you would have to wonder what Job was on about!

In the closing song a mother tries to convey some wisdom to her child. But the child in the song is rather sceptical about the mother’s consoling nostrums. I tried out several styles to try to capture the spirit of the song and settled on this one to frame my original composition which asks the question, Is There a Ledger? [insert song]

Listen to this quotation from Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a survivor of the nuclear blasts at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki The only people who should be allowed to govern countries with nuclear weapons are mothers, those who are still breast-feeding their babies. There’s wisdom for you! Until the 20^{th of} August, take care of yourselves, those you love, those around you and, if possible, the environment.

Morning Dew (Music and lyrics by Bonnie Dobson)

Take me for a walk in the mornin’ dew, my love
Take me for a walk in the mornin’ sun, my love
You can’t go walkin’ in the mornin’ dew today
You can’t go walkin’ in the mornin’ sun today

But listen, I hear a man moanin’, “Lord”
Oh yes, I hear a man moanin’, “Lord”
You didn’t hear a man moan at all
You didn’t hear a man moan at all

But I thought I heard my baby cryin’, “Mama”
Oh yes, I hear my baby cry, “Mama”
You’ll never hear your baby cry again
You’ll never hear your baby cry again

Now, where have all the people gone?
Won’t you tell me where have all the people gone?
Don’t you worry about the people anymore
Don’t you worry about the people anymore

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Won’t you take me for a walk in the mornin’ dew, my love?
Please take me for a walk in the mornin’ dew?
You can’t go walkin’ in the mornin’ dew today
You can’t go walkin’ in the mornin’ dew today

But listen, I hear a man moanin’, “Lord”
Oh, you didn’t hear a man moan at all
But I’m sure I heard my baby cryin’, “Mama”
You’ll never hear your baby cry again

Oh, where have all the people gone?
Won’t you tell me where have all the people gone?
Don’t you worry ’bout the people anymore
Oh, don’t you worry ’bout the people anymore
Don’t you worry ’bout the people anymore

Nancy Spain (Music and lyrics Barney Rush)

Of[G] all the stars that ever shone, not[C] one does twinkle[G] like your pale blue[D] eyes,/ Like[C] golden corn at[D] harvest time your[G] hair,
[G]Sailing  in my boat the wind, [C]gently [G] blows and fills my[D] sail,
Your[C] sweet, scented[D] breath is every[G]where,

Daylight peeping through the curtains, [C]of the passing [G]night time is your [D]smile,/ The [C]sun in the [D]sky is like your [G]laugh,
Come back to me my Nancy, [C]linger for [G]just a little [D]while,
Since you [C]left these shores I’ve [D]known no peace or [G]joy.

 No matter where I wander I’m still [C]haunted by your [D]name,
The [C]portrait of your [D]beauty stays the [G]same,
Standing by the ocean wondering, [C]where you’ve gone , if [G]you’ll return [D]again,/ Where [C]is the ring I [D]gave to Nancy [G]Spain.

On a day in spring time when snow starts to [C]melt and [G]streams do [D]flow,/ With the [C]birds I’ll [D]sing a [G]song,
In a while I’ll wander down by [C]Bluebell Grove where [G]wild flowers [D]grow,/ And I’ll [C]hope that lovely [D]Nancy will re [G]turn

No matter where I wander I’m still [C]haunted by your [D]name,
The [C]portrait of your [D]beauty stays the [G]same,
Standing by the ocean wondering, [C]where you’ve gone , if [G]you’ll return [D]again,/ Where [C]is the ring I [D]gave to Nancy [G]Spain.

Is There a Ledger? (Music and lyrics Quentin Bega)

Hush my darling don’t you cry hold those tears and dry your eyes

Now you ask me in surprise why bad men prosper all the while

Is there a ledger in the sky where there’s accounting for their crimes

Where they will have to answer for all their cheating all their lies

Hush my darling don’t you cry I ask you please not to forget

There’s a purpose to it all even if you don’t see it yet

Holding faith is what we do even in the darkest night

Hoping things will turn out right that there will be a saving light

Oh mother dear why do you lie to me

I look around and see what’s going on

Slavery and oppression everyone seems to be

Sinking slowly sinking as in despair they drown

Hush my baby don’t you cry I know you need to question why

Bad things happen to the good not the wicked as they should

But all through history life has been a mystery

Love alone will see us through that is what I want to leave-oh!

Love alone will see us through that is what I want to leave with you

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.