Letters from Quotidia Fractal 4

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia Fractal 4. Today I woke up from my post-prandial nap- yeah, I’m old, and  that line from Yeats, When you are old and grey and full of sleep,/ And nodding by the fire, applies to some extent- except- here in the part of Quotidia where I live, there is no need for a fire. Also, I’m not grey,- genes, I guess.

Additionally, this famous line from a famous Irish poet was not front of mind as maybe it should have been in such a post from this writer. Rather, the lines- why do they lately squat upon my chest/ the succubae that keep me from my rest were echoing in my head. As a lot of older folk will attest, a proper sleep is often punctuated by the need to arise and go to the toilet or the medicine cabinet to relieve a variety of aches, pains and twinges that may interrupt an otherwise peaceful slumber.

So, I was not going to allow anything to interfere with a serendipitous spark of inspiration that came my way during my afternoon repose. I got up from my recliner and went into the spare room. I picked up my favourite guitar- I have a few of better quality, but since I no longer play in public, this is my go-to instrument. My wife bought it for me in 1973, not long after we first arrived in Australia- a Yamaha G-55, nylon strung, battered and scarred by over fifty years of playing in Australia and Ireland, then back again to Australia.

Not so long ago, I was periodically afflicted by writer’s block but then I had an epiphany which I have talked about in previous posts. As a result of my attendance at an exhibition where the art of Paul Klee captured my attention, I learned that in 1939, while he was dying from the progressive disease of scleroderma, he completed 1253 sketches and paintings. I determined from that time forward that I would treat any foray in composition as a mere sketch- if it formed the basis of something more substantial- well and good. If not, just chuck it in the bottom drawer, so to speak, and move on.

So, I found a musical motif based on the chords C#m and Bm and, in a short time, the sketch became a song. With a bow to Euterpe and Polyhymnia, the goddesses presiding over music and song, I present the following product from my  restive slumber. I call it, You Still Have Promises to Keep. You recognise the allusion to Robert Frost? I’ll admit up front- shameless name-dropper that I am- that you’ll have no difficulty spotting references to poets Andrew Marvell, Thomas Grey and John Keats as well. [insert song]  

Serendipity strikes again. Opening my computer one morning, I saw an image of snowdrops. These early Spring flowers have been known from ancient times. In 1983, Andreas Plaitakis and Roger Duvoisin suggested that the mysterious magical herb, moly, that appears in Homer’s Odyssey is the snowdrop. One of the active principles present in the snowdrop is the alkaloid galantamine, which, as an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, could have acted as an antidote to Circe’s poisons.

The snowdrop also features in one of Seamus Heaney’s best loved poems. When I was teaching in Ballymena Academy in the 1980s one of my students, a girl who loved poetry, recited flawlessly  Mid-Term Break. In this poignant, personal recollection, Heaney relates how he was called home from college because of an accident involving his younger brother-his father crying, the baby cooing, his mother held his hand and coughed out angry tearless sighs.

He relates how, Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops/ And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him/For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,// Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,/ He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot,/No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.// A four-foot box. A foot for every year.

It is a great poem, IMHO. When I saw the display of snowdrops on my computer screen I knew I had to write a song about them. I read the short accompanying text and, lifting a few words from that description for the start of my song- I was off, with nary a concern about the theft. [insert song] 

Now to the blast from the past, which is the concluding song of this post. I wrote it just four months after we returned to Sydney from North Queensland in 1995. It was first published on January 26^th, 2021- just the 12^th post of Letters from Quotidia, my project, which I thought would conclude on 6^th August of the same year. I called the song Easter Rises.

As I wrote in the original post, The song contrasts Easter in Northern Ireland with Easter in Sydney. The festival occurs in springtime in the northern hemisphere with the rebirth of life-an annual miracle. In Sydney, it marks the change to less warm days and longer nights- nothing as dramatic as the fall of leaves which paints the eastern seaboard of North America autumnal orange, red and brown… The bridge of the song describes the impact of the death of my first-born son, Brian, and how the birth of my younger daughter, Sophie, at Eastertime two years later helped to alleviate the pain and assuage the bitterness and anger I felt.

I also quoted from Wordsworth’s great Immortality Ode, and these lines seem appropriate here,  Thanks to the human heart by which we live,/ Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,/ To me the meanest flower that blows can give/Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. [insert song]  

I find an echo of the Wordsworth lines that introduced the song in a short poem by Gregory Orr, professor of English at the University of Virginia, And isn’t everything risk? And isn’t everything risk? The beloved lives/Then dies,/Then (if we’re lucky)/ Rises again/ Into a poem or song//Or into the world/In some other form/Impossible to predict.//Simplest story, oldest tale://Sparrows sing it/ From every hedge://And swallows, also,/From their nests on the ledge.//

The 79-year-old Orr writes of his poem, “I think of this as an existential lyric on one of my central themes: the primordial power of lyric/song to resurrect a lost beloved and thus transform grief and loss into the intensified affirmation that a poem is.” As I get older, fragments of verse- or perhaps they are just complete short poems- increasingly flash into my mind. One that just occurred is. I catch a glimpse of a shooting star./And there you are.//And that completes Fractal 4. Until next week, take care, stay safe, be well.

You Still Have Promises to Keep (words and music Quentin Bega)

Intro: C2 G7sus C2  Verse 1: C#m Bm-2 Chorus: D A E A-2

Verse 2: Dm Dm7 C G G7 C-2+passing chord A7/F# Outro: G G7 C G G7 F C

                  C#m

V1       Why do they lately squat upon my chest

Bm

The succubae that keep me from my rest

C#m

Not just at night but in the broadest day

Bm

When I to Morpheus seek to give some sway

             D                                   A                                                                                

C        Hey, that’s not unusual,

                  E                                                       A

You’re getting older and so nodding off

         D                                                         A                                              

Explores that territory that you must go through

                 E                                           A

Before falling finally into the trough

                  Dm                           Dm7                             C

  V2         As Marvell said the grave’s a fine and private place

         G             G7                              C

But none I think do there embrace

        Dm          Dm7                           C          

Before you give in to the final sleep

          G                   G7                  C

You still have promises to keep

V1     So what advice pray tell would you give

By what mantra should I onwards live

The paths of glory lead but to the grave

Seek truth and beauty be cleareyed, try to be brave

 C     Hey man seek ye the higher ground

When you may feel you want to turn and run

Countless are the people who’ve not reached this place

So learn what you can and pass it on

V2        Remember that your children still look to you

To separate what’s false from what is true

Before you give in to that final sleep

You still have promises to keep

C        And when you find the going tough

Saints and seers and heroes have been there too

Flesh and blood and sinew will weaken so

Sustain yourself the best way that you can

V2          Poetry and song have served you in the past

Prayer may help you as the die is cast

Before you give in to that final sleep

 O         You still have promises to keep

Snowdrops (words and music Quentin Bega)

C                                            G                           Am              Dm       G           

Snowdrops push through frozen soil, light snow and evening’s frost

            C                             G                                 Am        Dm          G

Why does this humble shoot survive, and I wonder at what cost

        F

Yet every year it doth appear and greets Spring’s early dawn

Dm

This miracle so understated keeps me going on

 I give thanks for another day I’m on this earth

I promise to find something of enduring worth

As I bring a little optimism even if it’s frail

Even if it’s short-lived and even if I fail

Better to have tried and lost and to have stayed the course

Better by far than giving up- this is surely worse

For regrets are poisonous, they reduce you to a shell

Hollowed out and empty, no place for you to dwell

Snowdrops push through frozen soil, light snow and evening’s frost

Why does this humble shoot survive, you should wonder at what cost

Yet every year it doth appear and greets Spring’s early dawn

This miracle so understated should keep you going on

And give thanks for another day that you’re on this earth

I promise you’ll find something of enduring worth

There is always something of enduring worth

Easter Rises (words and music Quentin Bega)

Easter rises in my mind

Of Spring and hope and new green life

Although I’m living here in New South Wales

I guess it comes from when I was young,

I watched at times the late snows come

And cover all the young buds in a day

Yet I believed with certainty

That flowers would come back to me

And every year they blossomed without fail

-I want to know, where did it go-

That faith I had when days were bright

That darkness would give way to light

And birdsong once again would fill the sky

But something happened in my life

I guess I just gave up the fight

And sang along with sirens in the night

But still somewhere an ember glows

The memory of those Easter snows

And flowers opening in spite of the cold

-I want to know, where, oh where did it go-

Blackness knocked me sideways as someone put out the sun

A cold grief froze me as I howled up at the moon

I was gripped by rage and bitterness

Until that Eastertime when you were born- I want to know

That faith I had when days were bright

that darkness would give way to light

Though flowers bloom here too in New South Wales

And every year they blossom without fail

And Easter still rises in my mind.

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.