Letters from Quotidia Hologram 3

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia: Hologram 3. I’m surprised at the number of roads there are in Quotidia, not to mention those that are referred to in that place of ordinary people, on occasion, encountering the extraordinary. The romance of roads, happenings on highways and the mystique of motorways have long had a grip on my imagination.

I can report some of the earliest words I spoke as related by my older brother. I was on a visit to Aruba with my mother and siblings in 1952 and the two or three-year-old me shouted, “I gonna hit dat big moo-cow wit my tik”, as I ran down the street in pursuit of an imaginary bovine waving a stick- at what? The nearest cattle available for such admonishment would have been many miles away, in Venezuela, across the Caribbean Sea.

In Podcasts 2 and 3, reposted last November, I reengaged with my love of roads of all sorts by referencing The Narrow Road to the Deep North by profound Japanese poet Basho, The Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman, and I covered that great country song, King of the Road by Roger Miller. AC/DC’s Highway to Hell and Chris Rea’s The Road to Hell also got a mention as did several Biblical roads! All in all, a roadworthy pair of podcasts.

I’ve posted hundreds of Letters over the years and hundreds of my own compositions but among all the genres I’ve sampled there is only one original blues song. From my mid-teens I have loved this form of music, buying albums of such luminaries as BB King, Booker T and the MGs, and Albert King, as well as the groups from the British Isles who were inspired by American bluesmen and women: Beatles and Stones, anyone?

But that blues song I wrote back in the early 1980s must have been getting more and more lonely because it reached out for company when I was putting together chords and ideas for the first song of this podcast. Over the years, I’ve got a lot out of African-American Langston Hughes’s poetry which treats themes such as racism, social justice, the day-to-day life of his people, with jazz, and blues rhythms infusing his verse.

His short story, On the Road, is too long to quote here but its surreal narrative about Sargeant, a black vagrant, during a depression winter in Reno reflects the themes which engaged the writer: Sargeant, turned away from various institutions where he is seeking shelter and a meal, pulls down the fabric of a church and finds himself on the road with Christ, who has come down from the cross. They chat awhile and then part ways. Christ says he’s heading for Kansas City. Sargeant ends up in jail, beaten and bloody and wondering if Christ ever, in fact, got to Kansas City. I thought I was going to write yet another gentle acoustic ballad but two blues songs, one 45 years-old and one still struggling to be born decided otherwise. Here it is, Baby You Decide.[insert song]

So, like a hardcase on a Harley, a 16-bar blues song comes roaring down the road and as the distinctive sound fades in the distance I wonder if it is heading for glory or something gorier. Easy Rider, anyone? I remember seeing the film at the tail-end of the sixties when the whole hippie schtick began to cloy and sicken, when flowers in flowing hair in San Francisco became blood flowing at Altamont Speedway. A lot of things were heading south at that time- Belfast was unravelling before my eyes, what had been a vibrant, music-filled city became a shut-off menacing labyrinth where opposing hatreds clashed in darkness. I was no longer a toddler chasing an imaginary cow in Aruba but an adult confronting the Minotaur now materialising in the streets of Belfast where primal emotions swamped rational thought.

What resources did I have to escape from that labyrinth? Was there a Princess Ariadne in my corner? Ah, yes. And she supplied the golden thread that led us to an Antipodean future, with many a mazy turning, of course! Case in point: the gravitational pull of family prompted our return to Northern Ireland where the hunger strikes of 1981 in the Maze prison near Lisburn occurred 10 years after Internment without trial in 1971 at which time we were living up the Whiterock Road. We could see the graffito on the cemetery wall across a cinder football pitch which we could read from our bedroom window, Is there a life before death?

The contemplation of this question resulted in our return to Australia in 1988, just in time for a bicentenary celebration that over the years has become more contentious. Just goes to prove that Minotaurs and Mazes are hard to get away from in this world. Ballads are in my DNA and insisted on representation in this post. And as random roads and nursery rhymes churned away in my head, a cautionary tale took form even though I know that the people such tales are aimed at are the least likely to pay any attention- as I can attest from my own personal history! What emerged from the churn was this next song entitled, Find the One. [insert song] Do we have the ability to choose or are we slaves to some form of predestination? I don’t know, but I proceed on the basis that we do have free will. Here are some nuggets for contemplation. In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the worst thing you can do is nothing. That’s US Prez Teddy Roosevelt. We are our choices. Jean Paul Sartre. Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved. William Jennings Bryan. Last but…, What do you say?

Baby You Decide (words and music Quentin Bega)

Intro: C/// Verse: C F G7 Dm7 Chorus: Am Em Outro: Am7 em7 Dm7 G7 F G C

You say that you’ve got itchy feet and that you’re rarin’ to go

You want to head straight on out that door baby you’re ready to roll

You crave the air of the open road this dull life has taken its toll

You say you’ve never felt so bad, never ever felt so low

You want to hit the Yellow Brick Road or take the Highway to Hell

Wander on up Diagon Alley or along The Via Dolorosa

The Boulevard of Broken Dreams might just bring you closer

To where you want to be baby You Never Can Tell

And so, you start rolling like a boulder down a hill

At first, it’s exciting, oh baby such a thrill

But as it gathers pace it tumbles out of control

And you fear baby for your life and also for your soul

But nevertheless, you’ll never go back you say the die is cast

There are so many roads you want to go down and that’s a fact

The roads to Jericho and Damascus do attract

And you wonder which of all the roads will be your last

You wonder about diverging roads inside a yellow wood

What about the silk roads that lead from east to west

Which of all these myriad roads will prove to be the best

Which leads to perdition, and which leads to the good

Does the answer lie like dice shook in a cup

Which way will the thumbs point either down or up

And when all is said and done was it worth the ride

Baby there is no one but you to decide

Does the answer lie like dice shook in a cup

Which way will the thumbs point either down or up

And when all is said and done was it worth the ride

                                                            …Baby you decide

Find the One (words and music Quentin Bega)

Intro: C2 Ebmaj7 Abmaj7 Dbmaj7 Verse: C Dm G Cx4 Chorus: F Em F G G7

The nursery rhymes are there to save you from your careless self

The guardrails and guidelines are always put in place

To help you gauge a way past hazards you may find

Maybe here on earth or maybe up in outer space

Don’t think if you stray out past the sheepfold in the night

The shepherd will find you before the wolf has crushed your bones

The stars above will twinkle whether you are safe or not

Whether you’re in clover or a desert full of stones

Find the one find the one who’ll always see

A remedy for your pain and who will always be

A support for you through thick and thin

Whatever morass or predicament you’re in

Of course you won’t listen and neither did I too

There’s nothing like experience to drive a lesson home

Question all the rules is not a bad thing to do

Why should you stay put when you are free to roam

But should you find yourself stuck in some dead-end place

Remember that you always have a ready fall-back plan

Follow the golden thread back through the labyrinth

Retrace your steps on back to where it all began

Find the one find the one who’ll always see

A remedy for your pain and who will always be

A support for you through thick and thin

Whatever morass or predicament you’re in

Find the one find the one who’ll always see

A remedy for your pain and who will always be

A support for you through thick and thin

Whatever morass or predicament you’re in

 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-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.