Of Subliminal Mysteries

I think Ive spent most of my life being confused and full of questions. Had I been born an Elephant's Child I would have been accused of satiable curtiosity. The questions mostly become stuck in my head these days or fly out of it so quickly they are never voiced. I guess a lifetime as long as mine may have knocked some corners off some of the more jagged questions, apart from those that query the inequalities of circumstances, still I can't help but ponder. I daresay I've already remarked somewhere among these essays that my questions have often led me into trouble, but still the qustions come. 

As I write this the time has just passed mid-day. I woke up early this morning with a dream song still reverberating in my head. As is sometimes the case I was dreaming of a school music workshop, an activity that featured in my life very prominently over many years. Four boys dressed in something I took to be far-Eastern or south Asian attire formed a line and began to sing a song made of vocables, rather than words. As they sang they danced into a space in front of the rest of the class and the line curved into a circle, at which point I woke up. However, since the music was still so loud in my head I grabbed the manuscript book I keep close to hand and transcribed the tune along with the sung syllables. I didn't have time to go back over it, because my other notebook, the one in which I attempt to capture snatches of lyrics, poems or ideas to be developed into such, had fallen open at idea number 322, dated April 2022. It was just a couplet and the rest of the page was blank, but these four years later I finally saw where the song could go. Now I have the skeleton of a new song, cross-referenced in my lyric book and music manuscript notebook and I have no recollection of what was my original concept four years ago. I only know I haven't broached this subject or storytelling style in any of my other work. There is a kind of refrain containing (at the moment!) the line "Follow, why? Follow, where? ..." I guess the mysteries are finding a voice in the song.

Yesterday I spent the day signing up to or renewing subscriptions for boat related organisations. I've never been through Stanground Lock and I fancy travelling out in that direction, specially with the cott blocking my way in my normal direction of travel. Consequently I am now Friend of the River Nene. In fact I was so keen to avail myself of their facilities I think I've paid twice after getting a bit confused following instructions on their website. I had plans for this morning, including cycling into the village with my application form and membership fee for the Well Creek Trust and basket for fresh vegetables, but every time I have attempted to get ready to carry out my plans I've been struck by yet another new tune idea. In between mixing seeds, fruits and grains for breakfast and medical routines popping the pills that are supposed to be keeping me alive along with boiling the kettle for a hot compress, followed by massaging my eyes and applying ointment for a recently diagnosed eye condition with enough hot water left over for ablutions, I've had to stop and write three tunes. Again I've no idea whether they are any good, but why, after months of little in the way of creative ideas, have the ideas started to tumble out of my head again? It happens from time to time, but normally I'm not in a situation where taking the time to actualise what is in my head is convenient or even possible. I first became aware of this phenomenon in 2005 following a serious change in my personal circumstances. It got quite bad. I would be woken up several times a night with the clamour of the music in my head. This was when I first took to keeping a manuscript book nearby at all times. I had been very unproductive for about thirty years and I felt a responsibility to record all these tunes that appeared to be coming as a gift from the muse. I would also have to leave for work early knowing I would have to stop driving more than once to be able to make a note of yet another new idea. I was afraid that ignoring these tunes would leave me dry again and I couldn't risk that. Friends observed that I was becoming a little obsessed and no doubt it was some form of hyper activity after spending so many years in depression. Whatever was the cause, it was exhausting, even if it supplied some of the best tunes I composed for The News of the Victory. Eventually I had to let some of the tunes go just so I could get some rest and the episode calmed down after a few  months. These days, in between new ideas, my head is littered with ear-wormery leaving no space for my own thoughts. This noisy mixture of sound that goes unnoticed by anyone else, gets quite jumbled up with sounds that pop up over the radio or on a podcast and I am left asking myself every time I compose whether anything I have written is actually original or a plagiarised rebranding of someone else's work. I suspect it's probably closer to the latter, but often I don't know for sure. And, oh Best Beloved, I promise I have tried to keep a little more balanced.

Returning to the major topic under consideration it is a mystery to me why, when I have an idea for a blog essay, I don't seem to be able to get straight into it. There generally has to be some irrelevant diversion. Apropos of nothing so far, it is a complete mystery to me why my boat collects massive quantities of cott around the prop, while other boats cruise through known weed patches untouched. I believe I may have made reference to this mystery a couple of essays ago. 

Meanwhile out in the real world, why are the loaves of bread I make so inconsistent when I turn them out of the pan? I only use a breadmaker, so the variations can only be in the ingredients or the amounts, rather than the processes. Usually they turn out elegantly enough, but sometimes the end result of more like a large rock cake! I've had two rock loaves recently and don't know why. I'm guessing that the proportion of flour to water has varied sufficiently to make a difference, though I do measure everything as carefully as I can. I've been through five breadmaking machines over the past twenty-five years, but this one has started producing these mutant loaves. Why?

Thankfully they taste okay, so now it is lunchtime and I shall cut myself a slice or two, slather them both with humus and garnish them with onion. Then, O Best Beloved, I shall disembark with my bicycle and go about the day I thought I had planned

P.S.

Those who know, know 😉

Of Non-Days & Songs That Are Out Of Control

Have you ever had one of those days that were full of good intentions and by the end of it you realise you had achieved very little? This could turn out to be one of those days if I don't do something productive soon. Hence this non-post.

I suppose I could credit among today's achievements the couple of hours I spent writing to someone I have never met who is really struggling to cope with her tinnitus; the glockenspiel practice I spent time on, so I'd be ready for percussion lessons I'm teaching tomorrow for a friend who is in America for three weeks; the processing I've been doing about a song I've been working on that will probably have to undergo a massive dose of therapy itself if I am to avoid trouble down the line ...

Songs can be uncontrollable children and this one certainly has been. I've mentioned in other posts that I find writing lyrics difficult, but I have read and heard many times the smug adage that many of the best-known songs have arrived fully-formed and that one should stop tinkering with them and get them finished, learned and shared and that, anyway, the best songs are always the ones you don't mess around with too much. That don't impress me much! I don't know if I shall ever experience such a pleasure or even that I actually agree with it. I do a lot of editing - sometimes over days, weeks, months or, in the case of a couple of songs, years - to make my words say exactly what I mean them to say. Perhaps it is a case of writing, writing, writing and occasionally the subconscious yields a gift as some sort of reward. I don't think I've written in sufficient quantity recently to merit that, although I have spent at least a couple hours most days practising and rehearsing. I don't know how people find the resources both to write and to practise. They require completely different frames of mind. Perhaps this non-post is an address to that very problem.

The most difficult bit for me is finding a subject sufficiently engaging that a song demands to be written - I put it down to my unprofessionalism and lack of imagination. I think this is one of the reasons I love Richard Thompson's songs so much. He seems so prolific and has covered a lot of subjects in his songs. He never seems short of places ito start. If he doesn't have an angry relationship situation to set down in a tear-stained song he'll imagine one, or he'll write about a motorbike, a lost love, a race horse, a Victorian beggar girl, an abused child, a night on the town, a fantasy wedding ... hell, he even managed to write a song about Sting! 

The lyrics of my new song appeared in a first draft quite quickly a couple of days ago at about three o'clock in the morning. By six a.m. I'd written three verses and a substantial chorus with a bridge. I'd even had ideas for the melodies for the bridge and the chorus that I noted down in my manuscript book. I'm trusting that whatever melody I compose for the verses will arrive at some point when I sit down with the intention of doing some work on it. However, the lyrics ... they are fierce and angry and, while that's not normally a problem, this time it is. I don't know whether that anger is justified or where it should be directed - which is just another way of avoiding admitting that I really need to look in the mirror. I have directed my anger at someone who didn't deserve it while I was being a prima donna. I let a personality glitch spill into the professional attitude of which I am so proud.

Have you ever met someone who was probably full of good intentions and they simply rubbed your ego up the wrong way? This was a case of that. I perceived a request being made, I offered a solution, the solution was rejected, I took it personally and the ointment I applied to my thin and bruised ego was to stop talking and retreat into my metaphorical ivory tower. Without giving too much away I talked it over briefly with the wise bass player last evening and I'm glad we found time for that brief exchange as he was preparing for a gig with his own band. Now I have to discipline my delinquent song. I've been thinking of ways to do that. Pity really, I did come up with some first-rate bitching!  

Notebooks and pencil on the bed and at the ready.

Of Blobs, Scratches And Other Musical Deviations

I'm in the process of writing up a new song, "Vote For Them". So far I'm working on a fourth tune for the song ... the others turned out to be unsatisfactory for one reason or another. This one has promise and will probably end up being the one. This has been the first song I've written up using the new score writing program, Dorico. Until a couple of weeks ago it couldn't handle writing chord symbols, so wasn't much use to to me, but now ... 
Since the 1980s I have used computer programs for writing out my scores - my handwriting being illegible and the ease of being able to print copies as required being really handy. If I go back through my notebooks I can find scores printed out from Steinberg's Pro-24, C-Lab's Notator, Logic (from C-Lab days, through the company's metamorphosis into E-Magic and on to being sold to Apple), Hybrid Arts' very neat and barely known program, EZ Score, Steinberg's Cubase (even in its early form when it was called "Cubit" or "Cuboid" or some such) and others I've forgotten. There was one called something like Music 24, which looked great as a sequencer, was on show at very loud volumes at all the trade shows for a time, was purchased by many schools in Essex and which crashed every time I fired it up to have another go at trying to use it. At least the idiosyncratic Hybrid Technology Music 5000 system didn't pretend to offer score writing ... although wasn't there a Yamaha connection at some stage or am I thinking of something else? I remember dongles and cartridges being involved with a special Yamaha keyboard and a monitor with a blue screen?
Eventually I needed something with more functionality and better-looking scores and Finale seemed to be the industry standard solution. It turned out to be a musician's nightmare. Enduring the horrors of Finale for too long and having to work on each project with its five manuals (!) always on hand, I switched to Sibelius, which had, after some years, finally reached a level of functionality (not to mention its eventual migration beyond the Acorn environment!) that satisfied me. I have been using Sibelius as my score writing program of choice for twenty years or so.
Yesterday I gave the latest version of Steinberg's new dedicated score writing software, Dorico, a trial run. I tried it a few weeks ago, but abandoned the project and had to go back to Sibelius, because I need certain functions which weren't in Dorico until a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday, though, I discovered that using Dorico for writing lyrics and chord symbols in particular is rather elegant. Now if I can get used to inputting notes the Dorico way it may soon be time to consign Sibelius to the "thanks for the memory" tray (Sibelius stopped being fun the moment it was sold to Avid anyway - and I refused as a matter of principle to upgrade to the subscription version, Sibelius 8).
Some of you may know that when Avid bought out Sibelius one of their first actions was to sack the team that built it and lose the vision that drove the program. Steinberg brought those gifted people back together a few years ago with a view to producing the new score writing software from scratch. I've never been a big fan of Steinberg in the past, but things sometimes change ...
Naturally there going to be things I don't like about Dorico, but that may just be down to being unfamiliar with the environment. Having to switch tools to perform certain functions seems a retrograde move, although the experience is nowhere near as awful as my encounters with Finale. A manual, specially one of the quality of Sibelius, would be a very welcome development, and plans are afoot for that. Yes, the online video tutorials are pretty good, but looking up something in a handy manual is much quicker and interrupts the work less. A manual also allows me to save some of my precious monthly data allowance for watching cat videos (only kidding!). I'm also not at all convinced, that editing note pitches in Dorico should require two key presses (Alt+up/down arrow when Sibelius just uses the much more logical up and down arrows), but that may be something I can configure within the program options ... (Edit: I have just reconfigured this in the Preferences window and can now alter pitches by using the up and down arrows <happy dance>) Importantly for me, Dorico does not yet have the functionality to write percussion parts properly, which is necessary for several projects, but this is promised in an early future upgrade. I can see myself migrating fully over to Dorico as the functions improve.
I am not sponsored by anyone (although I could be tempted with the right offer ... ) so this little essay is completely independent of thoughts other than my own perspectives and prejudice. However I'm going to go out on a limb and point out that there is a time-limited trial version of Dorico available, if this kind of thing interests you. It has only taken thirty-plus years for version 1.1 of a score writing program to be usable without total loss of hair. Just as well, since I have little more to lose. The portents seem quite positive at the moment.

Of The Vanity Of Journalling

How can it be the last day of January in 2017 already and I haven't yet written anything this year? Happy new year to both of my readers - even to the one who describes this as a "vanity blog". Of course I wouldn't see it that way, because it sounds rather a derogatory term, but if it does turn out that I am writing purely out of vanity I shall have proven only that I don't know myself as well as I thought. My intention in writing this online diary has always been simply to record some of my thoughts before I stop having them or lose the ability to record them as well as using it as a vehicle to practise writing. Before I "publish" this, by clicking the onscreen button and making it available to an audience outside of my own head, I shall have spent hours in the writing and even more hours in poring over the words many times. Only when I think I have reached the point where further tinkering is simply more procrastination will I publish. I find it curious that there is even the possibility that someone I have never met in real life will see this, read it and even weirder that they feel disposed to comment upon it. I have never sought that kind of interest although being noticed does pander to something akin to vanity - albeit as a by-product rather than as an intention I suppose? However, it is here and all who find this page are welcome, lest you get any impression to the contrary. Is a readership a "bad thing" ...  discuss?

Perhaps I am being a tad disingenuous too, because I do actually have a readership in mind and that readership is my children. I don't think they will ever know that I have written this for them, unless by some amazing coincidence one of them stumbles across this account and puts parts of the puzzle together, but I hope that amongst all the ranting and the rambling about bimbling about, they will get a feel for how much I love them all and how I think about each one of them every single day. I spend far too much time revisiting my failures as a parent, but there is never a day goes by where I don't think about my children, the youngest of which are a decade beyond the age I was when the firstborn arrived. I try to tell them how much I love them and how proud I am of their achievements, but one of the characteristics in our family is that we have never been that good at talking and listening to each other. At times we have excelled ourselves in both skills, but the timings need to synchronise too. One side needs to be able to express itself at the same time as the other side needs to be empathetic and ready to listen. I have been cut to the core on a few occasions to learn that one or other thought I didn't care, when all the time I was mostly doing what I could to hang on to my own sanity in order to be able to care for them in the best way I could and in a way I thought they should be cared for. I guess it's true that I would have given my life for any one of them. I regret that I didn't always find the resources within me to live for them. There were too many times when it was challenge enough to keep living for myself.

Talking of by-products, it has appeared to be one of the by-products of divorce from their mother that I am finding a voice with which to begin to build verbal intimacy with them. When we all lived together there were tensions far too great for either of us to give our children the parenting they should have had. We stumbled from inadequacy to inadequacy. I lost my belief in the god of our cult and in prophets and holy books. As a heretic I had nothing of importance to offer. When I came out I became a liar and a tool of Satan. Is it ironic that the bargepole in my life is now put to far better use?

Perhaps the drive to write is one of the hangups from my Mormon upbringing. Mormons used to be obsessed with "keeping journals", perhaps they still are although I wouldn't really know these days. I always failed to keep a journal as demanded by "the prophet". It's not that I didn't do it. I wrote quite a lot of diary entries in lots of different books and somehow, along the way, most of them have gone missing or become damaged and all my half-started notebooks have become estranged from each other. I used to love buying a brand new journal, I was always taken with the beauty of a hardback notebook and the completeness of the untouched page. I loved the anticipation of starting afresh a project that was going to be the real thing this time round. I love to write with a fountain pen too, but the moment I committed pen or pencil to paper the book was ruined. I would make a mistake and have to cross things out and the page would look terrible. The marks on my pristine book couldn't ever be undone and I could never just tear out a page and start again. That would be a crime against a book. A book has to be whole. A missing page is an aberration. When I looked for a replacement I could never find the same kind of notebook for the next volume, so all my efforts were recorded in an untidy, uncollected miscellany of mismatching volumes.  Much as I wanted to record my ideas I always felt thwarted. My discovery of the word processor in the 1980s made life a little easier.  My first Apple Mackintosh computer, with its integrated nine-inch monochrome screen and the floppy drive that accepted disks with a very satisfying "thunk" was a revelation. Of course I tried keeping my diaries and journals on disk, but storage formats changed and storing disks was unedifying. No one would ever know what was on those disks - I never even knew what files were in my disks! They all contained a mixture of work and personal projects, word processed documents, poorly drawn diagrams and spreadsheets; occasionally even the odd musical composition. As the months and years went by each medium of storage accelerated into obsolescence. Now though, having discovered blogging and this website, I feel I can write and enjoy writing on my computer, my tablet or occasionally even my phone - although for the latter it is not only the window but also the keys that are far too small to make it that pleasurable an experience.

How did this happen? I was going to write about something else and somewhere en route I became sidetracked. I shall change the title and start again on what I thought I was going to write.

I would wish you a happy 2017 in all sincerity, but we really have got off to a rather bad start.

Someone Is Telling Me Lies

First of all I need to remind myself that this is a blog post I am writing, not a book, although I suppose it is possible that one day a book could be forthcoming.  Secondly, although I stopped believing in  Mormon teachings more than half a lifetime ago, and finally resigned my membership more than a decade ago (when I discovered such an action was even possible) the LDS church still manages to reach into my life and I continue to let it.  Thirdly, I wanted to respond to a recent video recording of one of the Elders in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, David A. Bednar.  That will probably be my next post, but before doing that I felt a bit of context would help.

Mormons love their witty phrases and as each new one gathers momentum through repetition in Sunday talks, meetings and conferences, one that probably applies to me now is “they leave the church, but they can’t leave it alone”. I don’t think this is because I carry the memory of either a happy or unhappy upbringing or feel any great sense of attachment or loss, but more because of the danger I think the LDS church poses to others.  I admit a certain anger when I discover how many lies I have been told and have in the past accepted without subjecting them to appropriate scrutiny, but like they say, “When the prophet speaks, the debate is over”.  Yes the lies have caused me anguish, but I have been much more angry at myself for my gullibility. 

On the face of it Mormons are almost benign in the same way that The Hitchiker’s Guide To The Galaxy describes Earth as “mostly harmless”.  I had one or two really lovely friends when I was involved with the LDS church.  I felt that most of the people on the ground were pleasant enough and honourable, but rarely was I able to cultivate the strength and quality of friendships that I have always enjoyed outside the organisation.  I rarely encountered anyone who seemed to share my interests in music and other arts or ideas, philosophy and politics.  Local leaders appeared to work hard to get me to abandon my musical allegiances, preferred activities and even my outside friends, unless they were targets as potential recruits.  Pronouncements would often be made in church meetings that caricatured in a most derogatory manner activities I found lifted me into happy places with no apparent evidence except that the prophet had decided that Satan was active in these projects.  Despite the fact I rarely agreed with the LDS position on many aspects of social policy and culture I didn’t see through claims that the church was led by prophets and seers until much later. 

It is known that the church does not tolerate dissent and people who break their moral codes and covenants have always been brought before their kangaroo courts and disciplined with excommunication or the lesser punishment of disfellowshipping - unless the perpetrator was deemed important enough for their misdemeanors to be forgiven (that may be something to explore another day). It is not until the past decade or so that I discovered the even more extreme punishments meted out without challenge in the church’s early history.  My essay about “The Ballad of Thomas Lewis” mentions something of this in the 2015 post “Relections on Life In A Cult 1”.

In my childhood, through my adolescence and into adulthood, until I stopped going to church, there seemed to be an extraordinary interest in matters related to sexuality.  This is particularly odd (although Mormons relish their reputation of being a “peculiar people”) since Mormon sexual appetites have been the source of much controversy and strife since the beginning.  The founder, Joseph Smith, married many women (at least thirty-four on record, two of whom were just fourteen years old), mostly without the knowledge or approval of his legal wife, Emma, and often without the knowledge of their own husbands whom Smith had sent away on missions that may have lasted for years.  The church was forced to cave on this “eternal law” in order to avoid the crippling sanctions, as well as the threatened imposition of others, which were causing damage to the organisation.  The manifesto of 1890 told their men to obey the law of the land and stick to marrying one wife.  This was not altogether successful and a further manifesto had to be issued in 1904 when plural marriages had continued to be found being conducted in the USA, Canada and Mexico, even among church leaders.  

In a similar vein, the history of the LDS church with regards to people of African descent has been less than honourable.  Brigham Young (another “prophet”, with fifty-five wives, and the second president of the church after Smith) was responsible for racist comments that nowadays are rightly considered outrageous.  Among these were that men having as little as one drop of African blood in their bodies would never be allowed to hold the priesthood, when such a “privilege” was afforded all other “worthy” males from the age of twelve upwards.  He didn’t think much of racially mixed marriages either, 

"Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so," (Journal of Discourses, vol. 10, p. 110).  

Being a prophet he should have had at least some insight that, in 1978, another “prophet”, Spencer W. Kimball, would declare that God had said that all worthy males may at last hold the priesthood.  Perhaps it was coincidence that by the 19070s the church was having some trouble getting permission to build a temple in Brazil and that the Brigham Young University sports teams had a bit of a problem arranging fixtures with other teams whilst the racial bans were still in place.  That’s not to mention the threat of the loss of tax-exempt status if the policy did not change.

So, coming back to sex, and growing up with all these dire warnings, I eventually felt resigned to damnation for failing to conquer the temptation to masturbate.  This wasn’t the worst of it though.  LDS teachings about homosexuality blighted much more of my life.  For several years speakers to the general congregations on Sundays would find some way to thump the pulpit about the evils of homosexual behaviour.  To my shame I bought into the lies that homosexuality was a deficiency that could be overcome as one might attempt to overcome an illness or an addiction.  As I was coming to the end of my teens there was still an overwhelming sense that homosexuality could be cured through making a good marriage.  Many years later, whilst in counselling after finally being diagnosed as having tried to cope with depression for much of my life, I worked out that I had never before been able to identify as gay because the very idea was simply something that could not exist.  My counsellor explained that it was in every sense “beyond the pale”.  I admit I have wondered about what could have been had I flowered into a healthy and whole adult - assuming such a creature has ever existed.  I am pretty sure now that I would have recognised some people’s loving approaches and I may well have explored relationships with one or two men for whom I can now admit I felt great affection. At the time, though, my feelings and attractions to other males were something I seriously thought was a phase I would grow out of.  By the time I reached my late thirties I had to begin to face the fact that I would probably not now grow out of these feelings … feelings for which I still didn’t have a name.

During the campaign for the November 2008 presidential election in the USA there was an even greater campaign being fought in California.  It was a campaign for God and for the moral salvation of the people of the state.  On 16th June 2008 the state began to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.  For Mormons, Roman Catholics and others holding strong religious convictions this was anathema.  An organisation known as Protect Marriage was formed from a number of feeder campaigns to fight this equality measure.  The presidential election was also an opportunity to introduce changes to California’s state constitution and “Proposition 8”, defining marriage as the legal joining of one man and one woman, was devised.  Voting on this was to be taken in California on the same date as the main election.  As with any political process in the USA a vast amount of money was required.  The film “8:The Mormon Proposition” explores how the LDS church was instrumental in finding the resources necessary to run the campaign.  Many people sacrificed life savings and their children’s college funds, because their bishops told them God required the money.  Any adult Mormon who had been “through the temple” would also have promised in a solemn oath to give all their time, talents and everything with which the Lord had blessed them to furthering the cause.  These oaths were naturally used as further leverage.  LDS leaders also suggested names of suitable people to front the organisation who would not immediately be associated with the LDS church.  Naturally they also denied any official involvement and had worked to cover their tracks.  They were found to have submitted falsified accounts of their support for Prop 8 and following an enquiry after the events had to revise their figures substantially upwards with suspicions that there was still much unaccounted for expenditure.  

I was very surprised to discover a personal dimension to this campaign. One of my own brothers, who had lived in the USA for many years, had donated money and gone out canvassing on the streets in California near to where he was living at the time.  He also told me it would be inappropriate for P to attend Dad’s funeral.  He had to go back to the USA before the funeral.  We ignored him and P was at the funeral to be my rock and my support.

As events unfolded over the coming months I felt an urge to try and work out my thoughts about the situation.  Coming out had cost me so much in terms of security, health and family relationships that I sure as hell wasn’t going back in again!  I sat down with a piece of paper and a pencil and the words to “Someone Is Telling Me Lies” eventually appeared.  As I continued to work on what I thought was going to be a poem it became clear it was really meant to be a song.  I hadn’t attempted to express any thoughts as either poems or songs for more than thirty years.  I had no plan to write more songs or to perform this one.  I had not even given any thought to how I would describe myself.  It was simply an expression of how I felt about those events.  I recycled a tune I had composed for my ceilidh band (and had rarely used) that I thought would work in this context.  I ended up recording the song using my Mac-based home studio and Logic and created a page on MySpace.  To this point, it is one of only two songs (the other being "Who's The Fool" for a local environmental campaign) I have purposely recorded as Marshlander and it sounds very different from what I now do in live performance.  Writing this unlocked a door through which trickled more songs.  When two friends started an acoustic music night in Downham Market I rather liked the idea of being completely acoustic, so Marshlander became a singer of his own songs with simple guitar and percussion accompaniment.  Maybe, when I get round to recording more of my songs properly, I’ll be tempted to throw the kitchen sink and the contents of the boat into the production.  I think though that I should probably not ignore the fact that anyone who has seen me perform solo will know me as an acoustic musician.  We’ll see.

Anyway, this song is now six or seven years old and I have since rewritten the words almost completely and worked a little on my singing voice too.  I have only ever performed it once and that was acoustically.  There may never be another Marshlander song like this.  For whatever it is worth, this is Marshlander history.

Go to this link for this old pre-formed Marshlander recording

A different and later version of some of the lyrics for this song.  It's all different these days.

Of Writing Songs - again

I am fascinated by the whole process of writing songs.  I wrote a little about my song writing  process on 24th April in the entry titled, "Precrastination", but I wanted to return to it to set the scene for another post I want to write.  

I spend a lot of time thinking about and writing the lyrics, composing the melodies and the harmonic beds of my songs.  Then there are the hours I spend learning and practising  to perform what I write.  Each process is another layer in what eventually becomes a performance that I hope people will enjoy or to which some may give some thought.  To put numbers to this process most of my lyrics begin as ideas that I jot down in one of my lyrics books (I have five A4 notebooks full of these at the moment).  Sometimes I start writing and the bulk of what turns into song lyrics may come out in one sitting, taking half a day to a day of work.  More often, though, I reach a point where an unfinished flow of ideas comes to a halt and I have to leave the song and pick up some other activity, leaving the ideas circulating in my head and after a period - minutes, hours, months - I'll be able to pick up from where I left off and get the words knocked into a shape that I find acceptable.  If I'm lucky, that's how they remain, but inevitably as I go through the other processes, it becomes necessary to edit the lyrics further.  This part of the songwriting process takes, for me, at least a number of weeks and frequently much longer.  Words are very precious to me and linking them into a coherent flow is by far the hardest part of the songwriting process for me.  Every word in my songs has been thought about in terms of its weight, meaning(s), imagery, implications and how and whether it fits into the frame of what becomes a lyrical shape and a context of scansion and rhyme.  I am sure that many songwriters take just as long over lyrics as I do, but I know that there are also many people who need less time than me to write a good lyric.  I am a slow writer.  By standards of songwriting, my lyrics are probably not good.  There are usually too many of them for some people's tastes.  However, I write what pleases me.  My yardstick is that if something rattles around in my head for a while it must have something going for it.

Once I have a set of words in place I like to be able to compose a melody that has its own integrity before I consider which chords I would like to use.  Working the other way round feels a bit like cheating, although I have done it for some songs.  Working from chords makes it harder to come up with a melody that I find interesting, since melodies are often implied within harmonies.  Chords before melody may produce a sound that is less challenging for a first time listener, but the outcome of this order of working is often less satisfying for me and, I suspect, may give less reward for repeated listenings.  Having the chords in place first makes it harder to compose a melody that strains at the edges of the harmonic construction.  If I leave adding the chords till the end I have options, sometimes many options, and I like having to make decisions about the harmonic textures I create.  Sometimes I have to find and learn new chords to be able to come up with satisfactory solutions to accompanying the melodies I compose.  I am happy with this as it means my songwriting continues to be a journey for me and a process through which I continue to discover and learn new ideas.  As of this date I only came back to attempting to write songs less than five years ago after more than a three-decade lay-off.

Of course I break all my own rules at times and perhaps as I gain more experience writing songs the processes shortcut themselves as my brain accommodates so-called "intuitive" leaps.  I have noticed that sometimes a song needs to have a melody before I can write a second or further verses.  It gives me a shape to work within.

Sometimes I get to the end of this whole process and have to abandon the song.  It doesn't work, so I have to go back to the drawing board.  I have a couple of song ideas that I want to explore and that I have tried to work on several times over the last five years.  I have started and sometimes completed, only to abandon some of these three or four times.  It's a bit of a wonder that I have a repertoire of songs at all.

I don't learn my songs quickly and one part of the process for which I have not found a short-cut is the learning - lyrics, chords, guitar fingerings and, of course, whether and what rhythms I play on my footdrums.  Alongside this there are decisions to be made about expression and of being able to coordinate all these elements into one performance.  With voice, guitar and drums I am, after all, playing three instruments simultaneously.  I have never counted, but I would not be surprised to learn that, before I can sing a song in public, I have practised it at least dozens and very likely well over a hundred times.  I am sure that some songs have required me to practise them hundreds of times before I dare sing them publicly.  Learning a new song is a process that takes many, many hours of slog.  A day away from practising makes a difference.  Time off has to be made up.  Fingers can soon become slow and soft, the voice less agile and the feet clumsy.  If I am going to persist in offering my music to others I have to practise, sometimes even when I feel too tired or otherwise not in the mood.  Once I get started a couple of hours can go by without me noticing, but getting started is not always easy.

Despite all this, I often feel that I have not done enough.  As the saying goes, an amateur rehearses until they get their music right, a professional practises until they can't get it wrong.  I could and should always do more.  The singing and the songwriting does not bring home the (vegetarian) bacon.  I am old enough that it probably never will.  I survive through running music workshops and performing in various function ensembles.  At one time the Swedes used to allow their artists an income from the state until their art was able to sustain them.  I don't know if that is still the case in these times of austerity, but that has never happened here unless one has been lucky enough to find a private patron.  

Marshlander by Brian Parcan

My performances always feel as though they teeter on the edge of collapse.  I am experienced enough as a performer that I no longer go into a state of complete panic, but stage-fright attacks in insidious ways.  I may have gone through all the processes I have already outlined.  A performance may be going well, but at some point and sometimes for no apparent reason my ears seem to stop functioning, or my fingers may stop belonging to me or my feet may decide to go their own way.  Any one of these things has a knock-on effect and the whole line of dominoes becomes at risk.  If I'm lucky I can keep the voice going and therefore some measure of continuity in the song, I can also simplify a drum rhythm on the fly, but if my fingers can't even find the right strings to play and I can't hear which are the right ones it can be worrying.  This leads to further distraction and further risk.  When practising I try to sustain the habit of simultaneously singing the line and mentally lining up the next idea in words and chords, so the song flows.  Occasionally in performance, the next idea goes walkabout and if autopilot is also offline there is a hole in the song.  I don't know why this happens because it does so even in songs I think I know faultlessly.  I guess it is my fault for not practising hard enough, or efficiently enough.  To be honest I'm not even sure that the mistakes that happen are always noticed by some people, but they are noticed by me and I feel very disappointed with myself for not being able to give my audience the absolute best.  I am pretty sure that no one criticises me harder than I do myself.

Of Losing Gems And Marbles

I have set myself a little challenge to write something a few days each week.  This challenge is probably doomed to failure.  I realise that goals are supposed to be specific and given more precise time references.  Whoever made that rule doesn't live in my world.

I didn't realise I have started so many blogs and had so many accounts.  I have often set up something and then made the log-in details so complicated that I have eventually given up trying to access them for a second time.  So it is that I have discovered two other Blogger accounts set up for Marshlander and I have no idea how many e-mail accounts there could be.  I set up another e-mail account this week to link to my new blog site (the other one I set up this week, I mean) and within five minutes had managed to lose the log-in details and am now locked out of it ... until, I suppose I can remember something.  It is to Google's credit that accessing an account for which the password or account name has been forgotten is convoluted and tedious.  I gave up trying to work it out.

I don't consider myself to be entirely scatterbrained.  I can be quite organised and with all the passwords and details required for hundreds of websites these days I have to have a system for keeping them to hand.  Sometimes, though, things get away from me.  I suppose it happens to most of us.  If it doesn't happen to you I am sorry, but we may never be able to be close friends.

I had quite forgotten that one of my blog pages was even linked to Marshlander's Facebook page and I noticed it this morning when checking to see if I could add links to external websites.  This may be why that blog page has only one entry dated August 2012.  This is my explanation for the late appearance of two entries from 2012.  As an aid to myself and to any passing stranger I shall copy old entries into this blog so it may look a little unstable for a few days as I discover old essays and rants.  Then I shall see if it is possible to delete old accounts.  I fear, though, that Google along with Facebook might be forever.

In the meantime, please enjoy this photograph of one of my kingfisher neighbours.  This blurry image is the best my iPhone can manage, until the day that one of the kingfishers sits on my mooring rope, the tiller arm or the prow of the boat when I actually have my phone in my hand.  I'll get a decent photograph one day.

Precrastination

Lots of people make lists.  I make lists.  I like to tick tasks for the joy of scoring a line through an item when I've completed it.  I always considered myself to be an expert procrastinator, but a few months ago I came across the concept of precrastination.  Apparently it is different from procrastination.  Say, for example, I make a list of things to do. Then I do something today that doesn't need to be done until tomorrow in an attempt to put off a rather more urgent task I'd rather not start ... that is precrastination.

I'm currently working on a song.  the working title is "Grey".  Owing to lassitude verging on laziness that is probably the title it will keep forever.  A first draft of the lyrics came to me fairly quickly, in a single day, a Monday if i remember correctly.  However, redrafting, editing, adding a tune, working out a harmonic structure and learning the damned thing are mostly in various states of progress.

I don't need to be writing this diary (apparently I should call it a "blog", which undoubtedly means something special) and I should be working on the song and a few others that I plan to sing tonight.  I really should think about eating something more nourishing than an almost finished packet of dried apricots.  I may make myself a cheese sandwich to which I shall add a few raw and pickled vegetables.

I think the reason I decided on keeping a diary like this is that I shall end up making myself write something.  I believe that unless I practise I don't stand much chance of hitting a mark of any kind.  I think that is what "Grey" is about.  If I sing it tonight, you could hear it on West Norfolk Radio - there's also an "app" - heaven help us - to listen in on your telephone.  As I try to explore in the song, music comes to me more readily than words do.  I really do have many books of incomplete tunes, poems and song lyrics.

In the meantime here's a bit of

"Grey"

Untroubled I am by the burden of genius

I struggle with words to find something to say.

Life putters on - a distraction from boredom,

An attempt to stay solvent and living each day.

I'd like to be original; I know I'm derivative.

I wear my influences on open display

I grew up in colours I liked it that way.

Now I look in the mirror

And only see grey.

Look out of the window

Watching the river flow by

Look up to the skyscape

Clouds making shapes in the sky.

Make rhythms and colours from sounds that surround me

Watch how the wind shapes the river.

It changes each day.

Turn back to the blank page

Ink out a doodle.

I’m thinking in colour, but everything’s grey.

I hear my friends talking like proper songwriters

Of choruses, verses, key changes and all;

Of intros and outros and middle-eight solos,

Of descending bass lines and dominant chords.

I just tell stories or capture a moment

And fool myself it’s my inimitable way.

I imagine the colour in all that I say.

Then I look at the writing and only see grey.

Look out of the window

Watching the river flow by

Look up to the skyscape

Clouds making shapes in the sky.

Head full of music.  It’s all just the same tune.

The rhythm’s are boring and everything’s in the same key.

Turn back to the blank page

Ink out a doodle.

Another creation that nobody needs!

If I get close to finishing something important

I'll go and make supper though cooking’s a chore.

I could be at practice, or even rehearsing,

Or finishing something I started before.

I've books upon books of half-started writing

Or half-finished music that sits in a drawer.

The songs I’ve completed don’t leap off the score

I've started to practise them ten times or more.

Switch on the computer

Download the e-mails and weed out the spam.

Log into a forum,

Post in a thread, show how clever I am.

Share things on Facebook (too much information)

Laying down evidence nobody needs.

One game of Tetris, one hand of Spider

Leaving a legacy nobody reads.

... etc

"Grey" copyright Marshlander