Welcome to the final letter from Quotidia. They began on January 11, 2021, as the pandemic was an entrenched feature of life just about everywhere. They reach their terminus on October 1, 2023. Over that time I have published 250 letters. That is a nice round figure to wrap up what began as a pandemic project.
Grief is a polymorphous beast. When my sister-in-law, with whom I had exchanged many letters over the years, died in October 2010, it prompted recall of a story about her mother who had a near-term stillborn infant who, because of dogmatic strictures, could not be buried in consecrated ground. On her deathbed, she revealed that she had never forgotten, for even a day, that child and she asked to be buried with the lonely one. The lonely one. One is a number grief understands. When I read that 599 children have been killed in Ukraine, I am numb.
But then I read the following account of a recent attack on the hometown of president Vlodymyr Zelenskyy, from the latest issue of A Letter From Ukraine made available by the Polish Dominicans who administer my local parish, Russian rockets hit a 9 storey apartment building…Among the dead were ten-year-old Daria and her mother Natalya. Next to the ruined building people assembled a mound of flowers and toys. In the picture you can see two boxes of Barbie dolls. The same ones that are in the dreams of millions of movie-going peers of Daria around the world. My eyes fill.
On grief, Emily Dickinson, as with so many other topics, has a singular view and I offer here the opening two stanzas of a much longer poem, I measure every Grief I meet/With narrow, probing, eyes – /I wonder if It weighs like Mine –/ Or has an Easier size.//I wonder if They bore it long –/ Or did it just begin –/ I could not tell the Date of Mine –/ It feels so old a pain – So old a pain- this year my first-born son, Brian would have turned 50, but as he died at age 15 in 1989, such a celebration was never going to be.
Over the years I have written several songs about him, and I will present here a song I wrote in December 2005, with the title, (on what would have been) Your 32nd Birthday. It was first published it in August 2016 as part of my blog The Summa Quotidia, which, as I mentioned in the last post, was the precursor to Letters from Quotidia, where it found new life as part of a podcast published on 3rd June 2021. Here it is. [insert song]
Have you ever passed a medieval cathedral and looked up in wonder at the gargoyles leering out high above you? They are intended as ornate waterspouts protecting the building from the excess run-off of rainstorms. But they are also examples of apotropaic magic, intended to ward off harm or evil influences. Many cultures over many centuries have practised apotropaic magic right down to the present day.
Not me! I l hear you scoff. So, you don’t have a good luck charm, never cross your fingers, avoid cracks in the pavement, knock on wood or toss spilled salt over your shoulder. Instead you walk under ladders, smash mirrors whenever you can and wouldn’t wish upon a star even on a romantic midnight tryst with the woman (or man) of your dreams. OK. Brave (or is it foolhardy) you. But the song you will next hear is an example of such magic. Here’s how it came about.
The song, A World of Pain, was written and recorded in February 2002. I wrote in The Letters from Quotidia of May 2021, you know, it took me about six months to even believe fully in the events of September 11, 2001. But, here, from the perspective of COVID-ravaged 2021, I stand by the imaginative recreation of a possible dystopian future, outlined in the song, for people like me… It is as likely to come to pass as any of the prognostications of the experts I …read in the daily newspapers…The song posits a post-apocalyptic world in which small groups of Westerners, clinging to remnants of their culture and past, wander through a desolate landscape, harried by bands of fanatics (the successors of the Taliban and Islamic State, perhaps) who periodically force them to uproot and keep moving. I recorded the song in my workroom with just an acoustic guitar and vocal. I overdubbed a thin, sparse electric guitar after this and hoped that the apotropaic magic of the composition would help ward off the dystopian future foretold in the lyrics. It has worked so far- for me and my family.
But alas, not for far too many Afghan women, children-and let’s not forget their supportive men- trapped in just such a nightmarish situation. I want to pay tribute to their bravery, resilience, and humour by reference to a poetic form, the landay, which is part of an oral tradition dating back, according to the estimable Poetry Foundation, to the Bronze-Age arrival of Indo-Aryan caravans to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India around 1700 BC. These poems could have evolved out of communication through call and response back and forth over a long caravan train. The call and response nature of landays has morphed into teasing and sparring love poems between men and women; a kind of stichomythia that rivals that of ancient Greece.
Listen to an example of this ancient form from the second decade of the 21st century, When you kissed me, you bit me,/What will my mother say?/Give your mother this answer:/I went to fetch water and fell by the river./Your jug isn’t broken, my mother will say,/so why is your bottom lip bleeding that way?/Tell your mother this one:/My jug fell on clay, I fell on stone./You have all my mother’s answers, sweet./Now take my raw mouth — bon appétit! [insert song]
To conclude, here is a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson from 1866 where the Roman god, Terminus addresses the poet. Terminus is speaking also to all of us fortunate enough to have reached or surpassed three score and ten: It is time to be old,/To take in sail:—/The god of bounds,/Who sets to seas a shore,/Came to me in his fatal rounds/,And said: “No more!/No farther shoot/Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root./Fancy departs: no more invent;/Contract thy firmament/To compass of a tent./There’s not enough for this and that,/Make thy option which of two;/Economize the failing river,/Not the less revere the Giver,/Leave the many and hold the few./Timely wise accept the terms,/Soften the fall with wary foot;/A little while/Still plan and smile,/And,—fault of novel germs,—/Mature the unfallen fruit./Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires,/Bad husbands of their fires,/Who, when they gave thee breath,/Failed to bequeath/The needful sinew stark as once,/The Baresark marrow to thy bones,/ But left a legacy of ebbing veins,/Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,—/Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb,/Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.”//As the bird trims her to the gale,/I trim myself to the storm of time,/I man the rudder, reef the sail,/Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:/“Lowly faithful, banish fear,/Right onward drive unharmed;/The port, well worth the cruise, is near,/And every wave is charmed.”
With any luck, in the words the poem just quoted, I may for a little while still plan and smile and create something else because- that is what I do. And optimist that I am, and again in the words of the poem, I do believe The port, well worth the cruise. While I hope that port is still a little way off- the letters have reached their terminus. The final song I cover for the letters was recorded in 1965 by an artist I have listened to in awe and thankfulness through seven decades, Bob Dylan. I think it fits. [insert song]
It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue. The 72-odd hours of podcasts encompassing several hundred songs and several hundred thousand words of prose and poetry that go to make up the Letters from Quotidia, over 33 months would prompt the retort of any junior doctor that he or she works that many hours in a typical week, routinely saving lives as part of their daily round. So, I ‘ll just end by saying a humble thanks to all those who have listened to these podcasts. I’ll also reprise the final words from my final podcast for the Summa Quotidia, in 2016, where the ancient Greek poet Archilochus fleeing battle, throws away his shield reasoning, But at least I got myself safely out! But, in two days’ time, tune in for Radio Quotidia: a series of weekly podcasts of 15 minutes or less featuring two songs. Fifteen weeks remain before the end of the calendar year. Each month will have a theme. October’s theme is The Blues, and the first program features two songs about American highways: Route 66, America’s Main Street, and Highway 61, the Blues highway. Tune in, then and… we’ll see.
(on what would have been) Your 32nd Birthday (words and music Quentin Bega)
Well nobody told me grief could stay green
Time would not heal the pain I feel
I’ve got diabetes my heart is not strong
High blood pressure pulses and I’m oh I’m getting on
We visit your sister now she’s 33
Found a life partner wants to be a mother-to-be
Your brother’s a young man who beat all the odds
He looks just like you two peas two peas in a pod
You’ve got a young sister you never knew
In our family history we’ve still to bring her to you
Your mother is frailer her bones breaking down
But she’s held us together since you went into the ground
Yeah nobody told me grief could stay green
And time would not heal the pain this pain I still feel
A World of Pain (words and music Quentin Bega)
Thunder is distant a storm on the way
As we lie under the shade of a prophecy tree
mumbling into our beads we pray
Horseman appear in a cloud of woe
Shouting this is the end so pack up your gear
And wrap up your women from head to toe
Oh so we set out over the plain
Looking for shelter again and again
As they ride away yeah they ride away
And leave a world of pain a world of pain
Days are for hunger nights are for dreams
Of magic lights in the sky
Before the dawn breaks a lone voice screams
Now once we had cities brighter than gold
Now ragged tents hold our tribe
The horsemen drew near and once again we must face the cold
Oh so we set out over the plain
Looking for shelter again and again
As they ride away yeah they ride away
And leave a world of pain a world of pain
Oh so we set out over the plain
Looking for shelter again and again
As they ride away yeah they ride away
And leave a world of pain a world of pain
It’s All Over Now Baby Blue (words and music Bob Dylan)
You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last
But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast
Yonder stands your orphan with his gun
Crying like a fire in the sun
Look out the saints are coming through
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue
The highway is for gamblers, better use your sense
Take what you have gathered from coincidence
The empty-handed painter from your streets
Is drawing crazy patterns on your sheets
The sky, too, is folding under you
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue
All your seasick sailors, they are rowing home
Your empty handed armies, they’re all going home
The lover who just walked out your door
Has taken all his blankets from the floor
The carpet, too, is moving under you
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue
Leave your stepping stones behind, something calls for you.
Forget the dead you’ve left, they will not follow you.
The vagabond who’s rapping at your door
Is standing in the clothes that you once wore
Strike another match, go start anew
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue
And it’s all over now, Baby Blue
Credits: All written text, song lyrics and music (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.
Technical Stuff: Microphone- Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 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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