Music - Finding my way back and forward - 4, a playlist

Today I'll be hosting a Farewell Ceremony for Mike2, who died just over two years ago but without any kind of funeral.  That was his choice.  He said he wouldn't care one way or another if any of us chose to arrange something afterwards because he'd be dead.  Nobody has, until now, and in spite of all the difficulties of the past 18 months, I've put together a day he could have been proud of.

This is a very long playlist I've put together and it will be playing on shuffle in the background after the ceremony while we lunch and drink toasts and chat.  It comprises music I know he loved plus a few songs which remind me of him.

Music - Finding my way back and forward - 3, and back and forward!

Mike3

This week my journey through the music of my life took an unusual turn.  I say that.  In fact it's taken many turns, backwards, forwards and sideways, linking many bits of my life together.  This is something of a long and rambling post the twists and turns of which are almost certainly much more interesting to me than to you, and to help you keep up with all those twists and turns I'm going to put some words in bold. Unless you're familiar with my love life, you'll find you soon need them, in order to get all the different Mike's straight in your mind.  (There have been three of them and all have died.)

Way back in December I was discussing the musician Johnny Coppin with a friend and mentioned that I used to own a cassette of an album of his, "Forest, Vale and High Blue Hill".  It turned out that I had rashly decided to dump all my cassettes prior to moving, including not only this gem but also recordings I'd made of my grandparents reading out loud and other family snippets from the sixties and seventies, all because I was trying to downsize and currently didn't have a cassette player.  So much spilt milk.

I tried to find a copy of the album but came up with nothing, even asking various local contacts who all reported that it seemed to be something that was only released on vinyl and cassette.

My third Mike (in a life partner sort of way), who was in fact Mike2 because I met him second, died in 2023.  He decreed no funeral or ceremony of any kind, believing as I and his elder son did at the time that the two of us would meet over an expensive bottle of wine to lament his passing.  Because of various health issues for both of us this is clearly no longer on the cards, so I'm left without a ritual to mark Mike's passing.  I've recently decided to hold a small memorial ceremony (with a celebrant) here at home and have been researching the music we might listen to.

While searching for music for Mike's memorial a week or so ago I thought I'd have one more go on the Johnny Coppin trail.  I found his website - but not the album title.  As a last step I emailed him to ask if there was a digital version floating out there in the ether somewhere.  And discovered that it had been incorporated in another album with the title "The Gloucestershire Collection".

A couple of phone calls, a bank payment and a short wait for Royal Mail and the CD The Gloucestershire Collection was in my hands.  

Many of the songs on my original album were based on poems by the Dymock Poets.  (You can find out even more about them at Friends of the Dymock Poets and by reading the book by  Sean Street, The Dymock Poets.  In one of the bizarre turns I mentioned up there ^ Sean Street and his wife are friends of mine!  The Dymock poets were from the Forest of Dean, the westermost part of Gloucestershire.

Mike1 (my first husband, who died in 1991) was also a poet and certainly knew about The Dymock Poets.  He had an extensive poetry library (around 700 books, I seem to remember) which I'm sorry to say I have severely culled over the years and although he would almost certainly have owned a copy of Sean's book, I find that I no longer do.  Forest, Vale and High Blue Hill was released in 1983 and that's when I owned a copy on cassette but again, I no longer have it.  Mike1 and I both loved Gloucestershire, although neither of us was native to it, and we frequently used to travel to places near Gloucester to watch the Severn Bore.

Naturally, as soon as the CD arrived I started listening to it and was immediately struck with some regret.  For whatever reason (the most likely  being the mundane one of no longer playing cassettes) I didn't share the Johnny Coppin songs with Mike3 (who died in 2014).  As I listened today I realised how many of them spoke his language.  He was a countryman and a true Cotswold Lad.  (He used to quip, "I'm a Gloucestershire lad, born and bred: strong in the arm and thick in the 'ed".  This last was most certainly untrue!) The poems and the tunes Johnny Coppin set them to were in forms Mike would have appreciated.  Being on the autistic spectrum was, I'm sure, why he liked music to have notable structure and tunes and songs to have verses and choruses.  The Songs of Gloucestershire deliver both in spades.  Mike appreciated the writings of poets who had gone out of fashion, such as Rudyard Kipling (he moved past the possible racism contained in Kipling's poems to appreciate them as having been written of their time.)  He would have loved the Dymock Poets if I'd introduced them to him.

I'm so pleased to be able to listen to these songs once again.  They speak, no, they sing out of  Gloucestershire.  I've lived here for nearly 50 years and spent much of my childhood visiting my grandparents in Bourton-on-the-Hill and now consider myself a Gloucestershire lass.  I should probably think of buying a fresh copy of Sean's book.

Music - finding my way back and forward - 2

It's time for overdue realisations.

First, it seems to me that music at its deepest is about human connection.  This is what I was going to write about in the first place.  Although it's related to what I am actually going to write about, as a topic of its own it will have to wait for another post now because  

Second, this morning I was listening to Ed Sheeran's version of "The Parting Glass", (studio version, hidden track at the end of Track 12 on the album "+") and realised the song is about dying.  I'd thought it was about someone leaving for Australia or America or another of the many places Irish people have looked for a better life.  I've always loved the song.  Having realised it's meaning, I looked it up on the net and found that of course it's sung at funerals.  Why on earth wouldn't anyone see that?  Duh!  Then I researched, fairly thoroughly, other versions of the song on YouTube and found none that move me as much as Ed Sheeran's.

I was using the shuffle function on the playlist "Gentle" on my iPod and The Parting Glass was followed by the sublime Adagio for strings by Samuel Barber.  I'm slightly put off including it in my own funeral wishes by the number of hits it gets on Google for just that purpose but I did find one entry which says the music goes from sadness to joy.  Not sure on this one as I never like to follow the crowd.  But I guess every so often the crowd displays good taste.  And as a pair of pieces back to back, I've rarely come across anything better.  After the pure sadness of The Parting Glass, the adagio just fills you right back up again with peace.

This morning was by way of an experiment, listening to music while eating breakfast at the table and reading the latest issue of The Simple Things.  Previously, I've been doing this sans music but it occurred to me that much of my life is now silent and I might be happier if it wasn't.  I'd say the experiment was a success.  The downside is that I've only got this one Gentle playlist which will really suit the mood of Sunday breakfast.  Perhaps I'll add to it more often, but just now the playlist looks like this:

Music - finding my way back, and forward - 1

 

It was a kitchen fitter who put me on to a Minirig speaker.  I was bemoaning the fact that an electrician had fitted ONE speaker wire from the living room to the kitchen (where I hope one day to entertain) which was as much use as the proverbial [insert own proverbial adjective and noun here] to pipe music from the CD player to the kitchen.  "You need a Minirig speaker," the kitchen fitter said.  

The speaker wasn't cheap at around £150 but it's been the best music-related buy I've ever made.  It's small - about 10cms diameter and 8cms high - but the sound is amazing.  Even at full volume (which is too much to have next to you if you want anything else, e.g. your own voice, to be heard) it is not in the slightest bit tinny.  It's rechargeable and links by bluetooth to your device.  My device of choice is my iPod Touch.  Because of it's portability, the speaker is immensely flexible.  I can place it on the corner of a chest of drawers in the study and it easily feeds music to all the adjacent rooms, or I can turn the volume down and place it near where I'm working to have concentrated loveliness. 

As I discover what it's really like to live in my new house I also discover ways to listen to music and so far that's mostly via the iPod and Minirig.  When I'm working (actual "work" or tasks like cooking, see otherwise random top photo) I set the iPod to "Songs" and "Shuffle".  From time to time I save a track to a playlist.  Some of my playlists are well-populated, like "One".  This was, unsurprisingly, the first playlist I made.   What an original title!  I made it to listen to on the long journeys (in a taxi, down to Littlehampton and then home again) and it's made up of mostly just luscious tracks.  It began as just a list made of specially picked tracks from some albums on my list of albums but now using the shuffle method I add to it all the time.

I hope you find it interesting and possibly you may choose to try some of the music if you don't already know it.

Why I love Christmas, by an atheist

 This isn't really a sad poem, or at least it isn't meant to be.  It's a poem that comes the nearest to explaining why I, as an atheist, still love Christmas and even the religious bits.

Christmas Eve

Travelling, I made sure to arrive by the start
of nine lessons and carols on Radio 4,
Dad poised to prepare sprouts, painstakingly
as a military man would,
Mum doing something not requiring machinery
and in earlier years, Aunt Jane
talking over all the quiet, meaningful moments
for all she was worth.

This Christian service for a Christian festival
still holds meaning for an atheist of forty years,
linking me to generations of family believers
and to others, non-believers, alike.

Now I build my own collection
of seasonal traditions: trifle for one;
roast turkey with trimmings
for one, or more if anyone cares to join me;
holly and ivy and red ribbons and candles;
cards posted expensively to friends;
extra phone calls, gifts, tree, fairy lights;
Jacqui Lawson advent calendar;
Terry’s milk chocolate orange in memory of Dad,
who had one every year and
I slip into the past again
all of us singing along to the carols we knew,
Mum’s clear soprano, my alto
and Dad managing the descant still
here I am, listening, and weeping
for them, and for lovers and friends

human connections
which, like the number 42, hold
the answer to life, the universe and everything
tears heralding grief
and hope
and the start of it all.

Happy Writing

Here's a poem about the question I often ask myself.  

Happy Writing
 
Why don’t I write on happy stuff
instead of being inspired by grief
or when times are really rough?
I could describe a lovely leaf
 
or sunsets making my heart burst.
Why is my utmost misery
the spur for writing my best verse
and posting it for all to see?
 
Why did I write two good prose pieces
on funerals, grief and poetry,
published in national magazines?
Why nothing else for folks to see?
 
Well, here is one and you can tell
it’s not much good, although it rhymes,
so lack of poems can only spell
the advent of much happier times.

Unstable

Unstable

UN-stabul as Mum used to say it
in her own invented
language and pronunciation
like raddy-otta-meez.
And why not.
 
“English also spoken here”
Dad said there should be a sign
on the front door
when they were first married
but he became bilingual.
 
So today I know I am living
through a time when things are
un-stabul for me,  unstabul
without my mum and my dad
and my Mike
 
who saw “breaded plaice” as
bearded plaice, which it fast
became with parents, carers
and now still me. 
They never met
 
but on the phone discussed how
a single grain of rice was a rouce:
Mum thought not but
Mike was adamant
about his invention.
 
My new house-to-be is full of labradors
and other tradesmen.
The architrave fades into less significance
compared to the builder, Jason, and
all his argonauts
 
and I am tossed around in an unstable
world, missing all three of them
feeling out of touch with my
linguistic roots and routes
through the maze of decisions
 
being uprooted myself just enough
so I am now unstable
ready to be blown down in the wind
or washed away in a rainstorm
or undermined by something small.

Leslie Wynne Prescot

28/05/1927 - 16/10/2020

Anthea Warwick Prescot

07/07/1928 - 28/11/2020

Mike Hitchens

07/12/1943 - 11/07/2023