Very Scottish, very Glasgow. Great wall of sound music. And such great lyrics (know any other songs about social workers?) –
I`ll be at your side to console
when your standing on the window ledge
I`ll talk you back from the edge
I will turn your tide
be your shepherd and your guide
when you’re lost in the deep and darkest place around
may my words walk you home safe and sound
when you say that I’m no good and you feel like walking
I need to make sure you know that’s just the prescription talking
when your feet decide to walk you on the wayward side
up upon the stairs and down the downward slide
I will turn your tide
do all that I can to heal you inside
I`ll be the angel on your shoulder
my name is geraldine, I’m your social worker
The other day as I was on the way home from work, the train stopped in the middle of the countryside. You never quite know why a train stops somewhere between stations but you can be sure it means the train is delayed. A long time ago I realised that wearing a watch increased my sense of anxiety because I’d sit on a train which was just quietly doing nothing and I’d keep checking my watch to see just how much more delayed we were and figuring how much later I’d arrive than planned. I realised that I had absolutely zero control over the train’s movements and looking at my watch every couple of minutes wasn’t going to get me to my destination any faster. Taking the watch off let me look at other things instead – a book, a paper, a notebook, hey, even the outside world!
So as we sat doing nothing much I looked out the window and something caught my eye.
No, not the buildings in the distance, but that blackbird sitting on the bush. I zoomed in to get a closer look.
Look at him singing away! I couldn’t hear him from inside the train but a song immediately came into my head
I enjoyed the moment.
Here’s my suggestion for today. If you find yourself unexpectedly held up or delayed take a wee look around and see what you can see (or hear, or smell, or feel). What comes to your mind?
Last night I went to see Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham in concert at Falkirk Town Hall and, oh, how I enjoyed it. What a great evening’s entertainment. To be quite honest I’ve always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with Scottish music which can be everything from twee to tear-jerkingly emotional but I can’t remember the last time I saw such masterly musicianship as I saw last night. The accordion is not my favourite instrument (I was amused that Celtic Connections put on a concert called “Accordion Hell” inspired by Larson’s cartoon where everyone going to heaven is given a harp, and everyone sent to hell is presented with an accordion) but in Phil Cunningham’s hands it is superb. (I’ve never seen anyone’s hands move so quickly over a keyboard of any kind actually!). He played a tune he wrote in memory of his deceased brother and it was profoundly moving. Here’s a video clip of him playing a bit of it and having it analysed to show how it works its power. I love how he says at the end that it’s music from the heart. The best of music is always music from the heart.
The Beatles were the band I grew up liking. One of the first “singles” (yes, the little, black, vinyl things!) I bought was “She Loves You”, closely followed up by “I Want to Hold Your Hand”. I don’t know how significant that is but maybe it explains a little why I am such a sucker for a good love song.
That’s part of the explanation I think, but the other is my most fundamental belief is that the world will become a better place the more love there is in it.
Anyway, here’s a song that’s new to me, and by a singer songwriter I haven’t heard before. It’s called “Better” and it’s by Tom Baxter
I have so enjoyed the series on Scotland’s Music with Phil Cunningham on BBC. The final part in the series is called Home and Away and traces some of Scottish music’s origins and its influences around the world.
Well, Tommy Bibey, imagine my surprise when Phil’s journey from Scotland took him to Cape Breton then down through Appalachia to the home of bluegrass music! Bluegrass has just been a name to me really but when Dr Bibey connected to me through this blog I got more interested – really because I enjoyed his writing so, and he’s impressed me as the kind of doctor, doctors should aspire to be – caring, passionate and humble. He told me his favourite bluegrass had its origins in Scotland and Ireland. It made more of a connection between us. The Scotland’s Music series (by the way, it looks like the BBC has now removed all the video clips from the earlier parts of this series – boo!) was something I recorded on my hard drive and I just got round to watching the last episode yesterday. I watched in anticipation and sure enough he made the link with bluegrass and with Alison Brown in particular (whose album ‘Stolen Moments’ is on my pod – the track ‘I’m naked and I’m going to Glasgow’ always brings a smile to my face on the Stirling/Glasgow Scotrail train!). So, it turns out I had some bluegrass in my collection after all!
I have a very diverse musical collection, and that shouldn’t surprise anyone who reads this blog – I am a great fan of diversity. Neither uniformity nor conformity appeal to me. Why is that? What is it about diversity that I find so appealing?
Two things spring to mind –
first of all, Deleuze has a great concept which he terms “lines of flight” – it’s the idea of not thinking of anything as having fixed co-ordinates, not seeing anything as existing as a point, but instead seeing all points as lines, so that a point is just a cross-section through a line or a thread or even a vapour trail
I love that idea of seeing whatever it is you’re considering in its origins and its becoming (see that subtitle at the top of the blog? “Becoming not being…….”) It makes everything dynamic, changing, moving, developing and it connects what is both to what was and what is to come.
Secondly, I love the idea of connections, seeing patterns and resonances. I think that’s why ‘Linked‘ appealed to me so much.
Amy, has a lovely post about ripples of connection and what a good metaphor that is for blogging…..and there we go…..a whole other set of paths to follow…..the threads that connect us…….and the stories that weave us together.
I’m enjoying a series on BBC Scotland just now. It’s called Scotland’s Music with Phil Cunningham. Phil’s an amazing contemporary Scottish traditional musician and each part of this short series examines the relationship between some aspect of Scotland and Scottish music. This week’s episode (Part 4) was entitled ‘Heaven and Earth’ and explored what Phil called the soul of Scottish music. I loved this and understood with every fibre of my being. I liked the way he showed such diverse ‘spiritual’ inspirations for Scottish music, from superstitions and beliefs in magical creatures like selkies, to Christian traditions both Protestant and Catholic, to the ‘spiritual’ inspiration of the land itself. It’s this last that means most to Phil, and it’s this last that means most to me, but to range over such a diversity of sources for inspiration to produce music that connects the individual to something much greater, be it Life, or God, or the Natural World is quite unusual.
Take a look at the BBC site dedicated to this series. In particular take a look at episode 4, ‘Heaven and Earth’ and play the video entitled ‘Soraidh Leis An Ait’ which is played by all the musicians appearing in this part. If you’ve any Scottish blood in you, I swear this will touch your soul! And even if you’re not Scottish, Tommy Smith playing his sax in the Hamilton Mausoleum is enchantingly beautiful.
A big part of the debate about homeopathy centres on the issue of ultra-high dilutions of medicines. One of the explanations wheeled out is something called ‘the memory of water’ – it’s a catchy phrase but very problematic. Does water have a memory and if so, how does that work? The anti-homeopathy campaigners say it can’t be explained. In short, they say it’s implausible. More than that, they say that the difference between a starting substance and a highly diluted remedy is the difference between ‘something and nothing’. But still, I think it’s more reasonable to say it’s the difference between something and something else. One of the commenters here, Andy, asked ‘does the water retain a memory of everything else it has had in solution since the dawn of time? Or just the things that the homeopath wants it to remember?’ I rather liked that question. It got me thinking…..and I’m still thinking! But amongst the things it got me thinking about were how memory isn’t physical but water is, about how human beings are meaning-seeking/meaning-creating creatures and how we enrich our physical world with meaning, how we use language, symbolism, memory and imagination, to create an incredibly powerful presence in the world, and how experience is more than physical, more than can be measured.
So here’s the non-science bit – first off, some photos of my own. I love water and water imagery and it amazes me how diverse and complex it is. Have a browse through this slide show. I wonder how these images of water will feel to you? I wonder what they’ll mean to you?
Here’s the slide show
And then, here are some of my favourite water songs. Let’s start with Rain
I can show you that when it starts to rain, everything’s still the same
When it rains and shines it’s just a state of mind
Patty Griffin next…..
Sometimes a hurt is so deep deep deep
You think that you’re gonna drown
Sometimes all I can do is weep weep weep
With all this rain falling down
Strange how hard it rains now
Rows and rows of big dark clouds
When I’m holding on underneath this shroud
Rain
And, the fabulous Eurythmics –
Here comes the rain again
Falling on my head like a memory
Falling on my head like a new emotion
I want to walk in the open wind
I want to talk like lovers do
I want to dive into your ocean
Is it raining with you
It’s amazing how much the rain can change our emotions, our state of mind, and our mood, isn’t it?
Let’s spend a little time by the river! Rivers are so important to us. How many towns and cities grow up around rivers? Think how we use metaphors like “river of life”. Here’s Alison Krauss set to a lovely montage of BBC nature videos.
A complete change of musical genre, but keeping a religious theme, with Good Charlotte,
Baptized in the river,
I’ve seen a vision of my life,
My favourite river song about the importance of place – really, a song that gives us a real understanding of psychogeography! (the way place fashions a sense of self)
And, finally, with Christmas coming, here’s Sarah McLachlan’s version of Joni Mitchell’s The River
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
Which paintings, photos, songs, films, poems or stories come to your mind on the theme of water, and what do they mean to you?
This headline caught my eye in today’s Guardian – ‘I was trapped into being alive’. It’s an interview with Robert Wyatt. Ah, Robert Wyatt…….now that takes me back to the late 60s, early 70s, when my friends and I were great Soft Machine fans. So I immediately start to think about that band and head off to youtube to see what I can find. Oh, delight, delight! In two vids there is a live recording of the Softs performing Out-bloody-rageous from the glorious Third album – now this might, or might not, be your cup of tea, but here’s the second part – with Robert Wyatt on drums, Elton Dean on sax, Hugh Hopper on bass and Mike Ratledge on the keyboards. I have this on vinyl (must get round to digitizing my three or four hundred albums!) but haven’t heard it for years!
I’ll leave you to explore more of you like, but this music was revolutionary in its time. It was fresh, exciting and innovative. It was real musicianship. Well, Robert Wyatt fell out of a window and broke his back paralysing him from the waist down for the rest of his life. In his solo career though, he has produced some of his greatest work. He has a most unusual singing voice. Here he is singing Elvis Costello’s Shipbuilding –
In the interview, he says that during his deepest depression in the 90s he was
quite unable to sleep. Couldn’t lie still, revolving in the bed all night, and Alfie had to go upstairs to sleep. Wheeling up and down the corridor at 20 miles an hour, I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t write. I lost my sight, I suddenly needed glasses. It felt like dying, but that would have been a release. Physically, as it turns out, I’m very resilient. I was trapped in having to be alive.
Wow! I think that’s an amazing statement. In fact, I meet quite a lot of people who have this kind of experience. Even in the midst of the most awful suffering they discover that they have some kind of life force, some determination to be alive, some resilience, which keeps them toe to toe with the struggle of living and denies them the escape of non-existence.
The final part of the interview really grabbed me too –
Wyatt says his work is instinctive. “A French journalist asked if my music was spiritual, and I said, ‘Only in the original sense of spirit meaning breath.’ I am a breathing animal. If anything, I get lower, not higher, in art to work things out, relying on animal instincts to guide me through what sounds right. Beyond that, it’s unknowable, verbally inaccessible.” He adds, with characteristic self-effacement: “That’s why I work with musicians.”
What a wonderful exploration of the concepts of spiritual versus animal instincts, weaving them together, blurring their distinctions, to focus on what he calls the “unknowable, verbally inaccessible”. Now, I love stories, and I love to write. I am a great fan of words and it delights me to hear my patients’ stories every day but one of the other bigger loves of my life is music. And I think dear, old Robert Wyatt has just hit the nail on the head and explained some of that to me. I know I’ve mentioned here a few times, Deleuze’s three ways of thinking, but this makes me realise that two of my most favourite ways of experiencing the world are through stories and through music.
So, from this little headline in the Guardian, I take a wander down memory lane, accessing almost forgotten parts of my being, find myself singing along to Shipbuilding, and musing about the totally bloody amazing thing it is to be a human being.
The view from my window…….I find this very soothing.
I can’t see and a grey and pink scene like this without having one particular song play through my mind…..
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Heroes Not Zombies 