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:

Magazine prescriptions

I've not been quite well.  Most of my general malaise has been caused by antibiotics, which I finished yesterday.  This afternoon I've been womanfully resisting going to bed for a sleep because I Must Be Better.  Well, I am, enough.

So yesterday and today I finished my filing.  Some of this filing goes back about 9 months because last time I did it there remained a few categories unfiled which went back into the filing tray.  But now it's finished.

So far today I have been fairly productive:  a useful Team Viewer session with Dad, helping him create some labels, researching suppliers of silk dupion for my next batch of textile canvasses, and one or two other desk jobs.  However, steam having more or less run out, I didn't feel well enough to do anything else remotely demanding so I thought I might take on the Magazine Mountain.

Some months ago I resolved to reduce the pile of magazines waiting to be read by trying to read one per day until the mountain became a foothill.  (I have other piles of magazines - those needing filing in order, those needing culling for recipes or pictures, etc.  This pile is magazines I receive on subscription and is the Magazine Mountain.) My resolve didn't last, though and the Mountain has achieved new heights.

Mum buys me Country Living on subscription.  I've been getting this magazine one way or another since it first came out, which I think must have been in the early eighties.  It used to be much more about the sort of life I led or would have liked to.  These days not so much but it still has the sort of recipes and food articles I like and pictures of homes I'd like to live in if someone would like to give me the million pounds or so required to buy one.  I enjoy the magazine, though.  As much as anything, I enjoy the way the various section editors use colour and often harvest photos of things just to remind myself of colour combinations.  There are interesting bits and pieces to read, too.  I keep some of the back copies so that if my parents come and visit there are some for Mum to read, but as they don't visit as often as they used to there is less need for this.

Country Living is issued monthly and I probably read most issues before the next one arrives.  They then go in the pile, for Mum to read when she visits or, if older, for cannibalisation by me before recycling.

 I've written about Crafts magazine on this blog before.  In brief (well I'll try, but you know me) - I've subscribed to Crafts almost since its beginning.  I'm missing about 5 issues from the first 18 months but other than that have every issue published.  It's rarely about anything resembling the sort of work I do and yet I still find it occasionally inspirational and always at least pleasing to look through.  Back copies are now stored under and behind a table in my attic studio.  They're still available if I crawl under the table.  There's a general principle of moving copies to "back copies" status at the end of a calendar year or sooner if I've finished reading them.

Crafts is published bi-monthly.  I rarely read it straight away and it became something of a casualty during the Pear-shaped Year.

Ceramic Review is also a bi-monthly magazine.  I probably find it less inspirational than Crafts because my ceramics work is slow to change and progress.  Making, as I do, primarily tableware for everyday use, for the most part I'm content to maintain (or during and after the Pear-shaped Year try to catch up with) stock levels of the things that people always want while occasionally doing something a little different just for variety.  Some of the articles in Ceramic Review are very informative, though, because even if they are about processes or materials or styles not relevant to my work, some of the information or ideas are transferrable.

A year or so ago I contemplated going through all the back issues of Ceramic review, removing and filing all the articles I thought would be of future interest and recycling the rest.  This idea was met with such horror by John West of Lansdown Pottery, that I just couldn't go through with it.  So back copies of Ceramic Review are filed on a shelf in the study, behind the table (so you have to pull the table out to access them, but not exactly underneath.)  The problem with this is that they have filled up the available space and are now being stacked flat on top of the row.  Not ideal and eventually, (soon?) this space, too, will be filled.  And what will I do then?

The Magazine Mountain lives just underneath the calendar on my desk.  Well, that's where it started out.  As the Pear-shaped Year and it's only slightly less busy following friend progressed, the MM grew so that this morning I noticed it completely covered the calendar, which has therefore to be taken down to be consulted.  This Will Not Do.

I enjoy using the malapropism of magazines on prescription anyway, but allofasudden it struck me - is that what these magazines have become, a prescription?  Something that is good for me so I order it, pay for it and bring it in to my home with the best of intentions but rather less conviction.  Do I get Crafts and Ceramic Review because they're professionally Good For Me or because I really want them?

I'll fess up.  I dismantled the MM and distributed it into the piles of three publications.  There were 11 copies of Country Living, all at least partially read and most just waiting to have pics cut out.  It's less than a year's worth, anyway.  Remember, Crafts and Ceramic Review are bi-monthly.  Of each of these, there were 18 copies, that's THREE YEARS' worth!  And, (my name is Jane and I'm a magazine non-reader) there were 16 publications that had not even been taken out of their polythene wrappings.

So - what to do?  Catch up with my reading, file and promise to read all magazines on receipt?  Cancel one or more subscriptions?  Continue, but start marmelising the back issues into lever arch files so the rest can be recycled?  (Sorry, John.)

Suggestions on a postcard.