What did lockdown ever do for me?

Well, it started with a ukulele. A cheap one. It was tricky to tune, terrible to play, sounded musical, but in the context that one might say a 1940’s radio would suit a modern day audiophile. It inspired me though, to feel I was musical. When passing through Bodmin in January 2020 my perception of being musical tempted me into Craig’s Music Store, and I came away with a new extremely nice looking ukulele by Adam Black. This one sounded nice, looked nice, and had a pickup for when my inevitable gigging experience might begin. 

What began as a novelty distraction drew me to recover from the spare bedroom wardrobe a cheap steel string guitar I had been bought seven years earlier. I had found it to be harder to play than I’d hoped due, as I discovered latterly, to the nut being too high. It had barely been touched since it’s purchase. I could strum it, pick at it a little, but didn’t know any chords. When lockdown was imposed, I rationalised that due to secure employment, spare time, etc., I might pick it up a little, try again, put in more effort, but also ponder if it could be improved upon. 

As lockdown continued, and the weather warmed up, I began to browse multiple websites for distraction at just the time I was ‘succeeding’ with the nice uke, and the poorly set up guitar. I was stuck indoors whilst the sun shone brightly, my right eye cataract aggravated by inadequate sunglasses. I began to learn actual chords (whilst mistrusting that anyone might stretch their fingers to a C chord), browsed specifications hitherto misunderstood, rationalised what instrument might fit to my possibly fleeting obsession, and figured that spending a little more money on a guitar would spur me on to greatness. And having a 2nd uke might help too. I discovered nut widths & tone woods varied, scale lengths affected the tautness of strings, nylon strings didn’t hurt as much as steel and that ukes/guitars came in so many different sizes, quite reasonably affecting sound & playability. 

I went from having one poor Soprano uke, and a high nutted OM guitar, to ‘a collection’ that included the Adam Black laminated mahogany Concert uke & a Tenor uke, a solid mahogany Sigma OOO, a solid spruce Sigma dreadnought, a laminated mahogany Cort 12 fret parlour, and more recently (due to a winning a substantial value voucher competition) an Eastman grand auditorium with solid top, and solid back & sides. My appreciation of what makes a guitar good or bad has altered, understanding what it takes to play guitar competently has expanded dramatically, and my capacity to play a guitar has grown too, mostly through tips gleaned fromYouTube, and inevitably – a good deal of effort & practice. The sudden discovery of spare time does not diminish the necessity of using time to progress from playing poorly, to playing less poorly, and pursuing that constant climb.

Whilst my mental health ducked & dived at the end of 2020, following the cataract surgery tenaciously squeezed in at the beginning of September, playing guitars bolstered what good moods I could muster, and proved surprisingly meditative alongside the 10% Happier podcasts, and a re-reading of Persig’s ‘Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’. During long walks my teenage affection for Dire Straits led me to discover JJ Cale (despite years of opportunity – I had simply overlooked to try listening) and realising that Eric Clapton was a close friend decided that something of his back catalogue might match the appeal & authenticity of his Unplugged performance. Which led me to Robert Johnson. 

I know very well the reputation that Johnson has for ‘inventing’ the style of blues guitar playing that inspired ‘every’ modern blues/rock band, adoring ‘Love in vain’ by the Stones, ‘Traveling Riverside Blues’ by Zeppelin, and more recently Clapton’s ‘Me & Mr. Johnson’, but as with JJ Cale’s whole back catalogue, just hadn’t connected with Johnson when I tried earlier in life, perhaps because his back catalogue was so poorly recorded; it is a wonder that it survived at all. One wonders how much else was recorded in similar circumstances, but was simply lost to carelessness or poor judgement. As Clapton says, there is a spirit to Johnson’s compositions that carries it above the scratchy recordings, and odd, low skilled, musicianship. It continues to inspire musicians like me to try and replicate that style, because it is spirited, authentic, and feasibly easy to pick up, but tremendously difficult to replicate when the tunes have been filled out & polished by Clapton, et al, to something that is positively visceral. My taste in music is eclectic to say the least, running to nearly 3000 albums, a collection of usual suspects, and rarefied unknowns, and the unfortunately forgotten.  Not noting Cale or Johnson, amongst many others is an oversight, but one has only so much time, and isolation is a rarely called upon influencer.

Whilst I may have mentioned musicians famous for manipulated electric instruments, I had a set back late in October when I tried a series of Stratocaster, and semi hollow humbucker variants with a large amp in Richards Guitar store in Stratford-upon-Avon, and discovered my hearing aids couldn’t cope with the break up delivered by low volume distortions. So dejected was I, that I was almost convinced I might never play the tones I most wanted to play. It proved to be an appropriate learning curve. Once I realised why I was hearing the feedback through my hearing aids, I made amendments to the set up I had experimented with at home – a cheap Vox Pathfinder, and a donated Telecaster variant (not a Fender!) – and I found, or managed, what confines might suit my particular ears and their foibles, rather than giving up, destined to be stoically loyal to acoustic instruments, even if they still feel more accessible at the time of writing. I have at least secured a beautiful 60’s Vintera Strat, ahead of my intentions to manage the glassy chimes of which I am so enamoured.

There is a distinct possibility that some of you have started adding up what you think I’ve spent in the last few paragraphs. I will acknowledge I haven’t done the sums, and don’t really want to, even as I appreciate not everyone would or could follow suit. My wife would probably prefer that I reduce the number of guitars (for the space they require), but is also mindful that I play all of them regularly. The exception is that first cheap wardrobe guitar with the high nut. I can play it far better than I ever did before this year (and this collection) came around, but I’ve also learnt how poor an instrument it is. eBay would have believe it worth about £30, and I’m in no position to argue. Every other instrument fills me me joy, as Marie Kondo would demand, and my wife quite reasonably expects. The moral of this story are that playing a guitar should be joyful, whether it be a first guitar or a significant upgrade. My first uke was cheap & was never as joyful as it should have been, and it is unfortunate that the first guitar hadn’t taught me that for £140. It is sitting in our pile for the local charity store. The 12 fret Cort I mentioned would have been a far better starting block. It does not conform to what cheap usually is, but it is. Absurdly it has become the most delightful instrument I own, but it’s fair to say that owning all the others informs me of that opinion, and I would not dispute anyone declining to believe me when I say that a Cort AP550M is worth much more than the ‘modest’ £150 cost. 

And whilst I have yet to pull off a live performance, or complete a whole tune from start to finish, passable or otherwise, I have found the inspiration to persevere until the calloused fingertips are not painful, my inflexible joints have sufficiently stretched, the chord changes are clean, defined, consistent. I have progressed. My persistence flows from day to day, ten minutes becomes an hour, and one discovery after another feeds my patience through the plateaus of disaffection that affect any novice player. 

Now, when I’m listening to well known tunes, albums, performances, discovering new songs, even new artists (at my age!) I am led to ponder how a sound was made the particular way it is heard. I concentrate when listening like I remember doing in my teens, and I am investing my time (and money) in something that had eluded me for decades: a sincerely passionate cognitively developmental skill; more often described as a hobby. It may be shared by countless middle aged enthusiasts like myself across the world, with money & time to spend, patience & persistence to improve, and for which the shed, attic or den serves to manage one’s sanity. Who knew it would take a pandemic to help me realise.

Editing life

My parents took steps to change their life around a few years ago, timing efforts to the impending wedding of their only son. Taking up what seemed like a market high price for their flat in a northern suburb of Birmingham, they set off to the South West.

The short story: they arrived in Somerset, south of Bristol, having spent nine months on the coast near Exmouth, settled in a fairly unsatisfying fashion (boxes untouched in the garage for most of the duration), separately took ill, recovered, and resigned themselves to being insufficiently wealthy to live in a neighbourhood close to my wife and I, and ventured to discover a flat with two bedrooms, a very spacious living room, and a parking space for one large SUV, all about a quarter mile from where they had set off three or so years earlier.

I am conflicted about their circumstances, perhaps having wished they had stayed put in the first place, and wishing they had been able to settle closer to me earlier on in life. At least during the emotionally anxious period of not feeling very sure what I felt, I wished a great deal about life could be different. My life as much as theirs.

This conflict has several levels, relative to my own well being, but it is beginning to be realised (by me) that my own life is conflicted, and struggling to work out in what manner this is true, I am beginning to rationalise why the notion of settling somewhere is my issue to both perceive what it means, and more importantly how fragile I can become if that idea of settled is undermined.

For the moment, I am finding my past is leading me towards a realisation that my future needs to be far more reliable than it is, whilst I am dependent on my parents, and my employer. My saving grace is my wife. She is responsible for me understanding better that I must take steps to extract myself from this idea of settled, and formulate a path to follow forward upon whom I must rely most heavily on myself.

More enlightenment to follow.

Pet Hates #1

1. Sitting in Starbucks/Prêt/Cafe Nero, etc., with my hearing aids off, but still hearing the music. Akin to hearing your neighbours through the walls enjoying a party you’ve not been invited to. Not that we’d have wanted to be invited, or to attend.

Social angst, or introvert; you decide.

Greene envy

The number of writers that I admire, is relatively small. While most are well known, highly regarded, and consistent in their use of words, some are admired for the one lightning strike upon my conscience.

Hemingway requires only his surname, Ann Michaels would require faith that such a writer exists, but in the middle ground, I would offer Michael Frayn, Michael Ondaatje, Neil Gaiman, George Orwell, Raymond Carver, and before I resort to reviewing my book shelves, the realisation is upon me, that female writers don’t figure so prominently on my list.

I feel the need to defend this discovery, in the first instance, but I suspect, given longer to think, that this is not a reflection of accidental sexism, but an inevitability assigned by my faltering identity. Life has not yet taught me how to be me. Perhaps, I have simply yet to learn.

 

New Year’s Resolutions

Happy New Year to anyone who hasn’t had their fill of greetings. Whether I am at that age, or whether the world has reached an impasse akin to age, I feel there’s a good deal of animosity towards the Seasonal exploits associated with Christmas and New Year. How the Americans pull it off for a whole month, I don’t quite know. Maybe I’m simply isolated, and my other self (selves?) have persuaded me this is a human condition, rather than personal trait.

I’m all for renewal though. The New Year does often stimulate my need for change, and in the last year I have given over so much of my time, my conscience, my emotions, to coping with the absence of someone with whom I thought ‘my life is whole’ that I’m quite enamoured with the prospect of starting over. New home, new commute, new coffee shop, new writing regime, etc. I have a new notebook, one that is slightly wider than a Moleskine, and a new pen; ink, nib, holster(!), and using a couple of Prompt sites, I’ve made some progress with a daily contribution in said notebook, suggesting that I can find the time quite easily, and that if I publicly set myself the resolution of writing properly, as I’ve desired to do for decades, maybe this year I’ll get it done.

I do think that I need to declare something more definitive than that though, so here’s my idea. Over the next year, I’m going to set myself a challenge: a 260 Creative Challenge. Allowing for five days working, and two days off, over the fifty two weeks of 2015 I’m going to publish 260 pieces of work – photography, writing, audio, video – in the hope that I find some threads to bind together. I’ll use Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, Instagram, Sound Cloud, Vimeo & WordPress to spread it around, and well, that’s about all I can offer at the moment. Five pieces of work for every week of the year, published by Sunday of each week.

*crosses fingers*

Ancestors

Spurred on by the recent interest in my grandfather & great grandfather, I’ve realised how much information I don’t have about my family, and how enthusiastic my uncles, aunts & cousins are for more detail about their roots. That in itself seems fascinating; that one’s instinct to know one’s heritage is so human.

 

In reality, there is only so much I can learn about my grandfathers’ lives. The perception I form from visiting the property in Derrynacreeve, the experience I have when travelling to and fro, are always going to be personal to me. From select memories held by my Uncles & Aunts, my father, or the appearance of my grandfather when seen in photographs, I can try to embellish the perception I have, but that will be the best it can be.

Kodak Brownie

I have a photograph of my grandfather, whilst he is stood outside the house that, it is believed, he was born. Stood to his right, both of them on the door step, is his father. It is Easter, 1961.

I’ve become very fond of this photograph, not least because it is the only photograph of these two men together, but because it is one of the only links I have on my paternal family side to my 19th century Irish roots. My great grandfather was born in 1870, and this was his last Easter; he would die later that summer.

During a recent visit to an Uncle’s home near Lichfield, Staffordshire, this photograph was brought up in conversation and following a very short debate on when the photograph was taken – it transpired that the Uncle had been the photographer – I learnt a good deal more about the circumstance in which it was taken, and the camera that captured the scene. My grandfather was never a wealthy man, and it would seem the spontaneity with which he suggested to his son that a Kodak Brownie be purchased, was not only surprising, but also fortuitous. Without this photograph, James Snr. would be no more than a name to find in an Ancestry search. In fact, there are not that many more images of James Jnr., who died ten years later.

For me, there is a romantic attachment to Ireland, the perception of sunny days, green fields, and gentle hills, all of which gloss over the reality, that my grandfather left behind an impoverished existence, a family living in a remote rural community. Even in the early 1980s, when we know the house was still lived in by brothers (great Uncles) Frank, and Bob, there were no utilities supplied to the house; the toilet was an outhouse twenty yards from the back door, and the water supply was a spring located somewhere further up the hill from the house.

I continue to research the probable impact of the potato famine on my family, at least as far as it affected James Snr.’s parents, and further to James Jnr. leaving Cavan in the 1930’s, I have no knowledge of how the Revolution, and subsequent Partition in 1922 influenced his choice to leave, or what motivated him to head for Birmingham. I’ve no reason to judge my grandfather, or great grandfather as having political opinions, but it fascinates me that both men were born in a colony of the British, that they being Irish by consequence of the events of 1917 and 1922 was more complex than applying for an Irish passport, and that moving to England as an Irish national meant James Jnr. could work, but was not obliged to fight for the English. His sister Kate died in Boston, Massachusetts in the 1990s, though I’ve yet to find confirmation of the specific date.

Today, the property stands unattended, doors are unsecured, and though the floors all appear solid and supportive, one would anticipate a severe survey report, should one ever be commissioned. It might make a nice home, to someone with simple expectations, and the means to modernise the supply of water & power. But the history of the property may be gone, along with the memories of those who lived there. I should talk with my father and his siblings, before it is too late to ask.

New York Doll.

A good few years ago, I became friends with a girl in New York, and in the context of us having a mutual appreciation for the written word, we wrote for one another, and shared one another’s thoughts, in a way that perhaps all friends do, when living 3,358 miles apart. This is something that I wrote then, for a blog that the girl published, and I’ve thought a lot about the post recently. Something is in development, as they say.

 

Once upon a time, there was a little girl, who lived with three brothers.

After the Second World War ended and people began to rebuild their lives, my grandfather was involved in the reconfiguration of the metals industry in Birmingham, England. Though I only have vague details, it would seem his experience of managing a factory before the war led to him being involved in discussions after the war as to what use could be made of factories that formerly built Spitfires, since the world was optimistic that they didn’t need Spitfires anymore.

To that end, new machinery was required, and apparently New York was the place to go to decide what machinery they should have. I have no address, no hotel name, no streets or avenues to drop in to a conversation. If there were souvenirs from sight-seeing, my Grandpa’s remains did not reveal them. Stolen menus or headed stationary from the trip home on the Queen Mary? My Grandpa wasn’t the sort of man who would’ve kept ‘superfluous’ items.

On the other hand, there was a doll which could talk; it cried ‘Mama’.

For a girl in middle England shortly after the war, a toy that could talk was the height of technological sophistication. Even if it did assume that the role of a girl is to learn to become a mother, this was 1949. The United Nations Headquarters was still under construction. There was no rock’n’roll, and no civil rights movement.

I visited New York recently, and stood still outside Macy’s, contemplating the image of a post war city, that my Grandpa had walked on ‘that’ sidewalk, through ‘those’ doors to purchase a present for his daughter 3500 miles away. Naturally he would be a ‘stiff-assed Brit’, next to the sharp suited New York ad man, but he wore a shirt and tie to cut the grass, so I am quite confident he would have blended in to the melee of a mid-century metropolis.

Whatever the modern day interpretation of a baby doll for a daughter, it was a very special gift for my Mom. She had two older brothers who dominated the household, and as I interpret the impression it would have made on my mother, it was a clear gender defined gift, and did not have to be shared. In my childhood, for all the toys I owned and did not share with anyone, I relished the imagination heaped on outdoor play with my neighbourhood friends; toys were not always necessary.

Thirty years earlier, even a collected toy box would have been sparsely filled with toys for a younger, female sibling, and outdoor games must surely have involved ‘shooting’ fingers or sabre-length sticks. A New York doll, especially for his daughter, was a unique concession on the part of my hard-working Grandpa.

Sadly, the doll did not last to see my mother’s suppressed teenage angst. Boys will improvise how a toy can be played with, and the elder brother, professing an interest in medicine, decided that removing the voice box by surgical procedure would be excellent practice for his future career. It is not known if the immigrant baby survived the operation, albeit mute for the remainder of its life. Fast forward ten years, and the apprentice surgeon was a novice priest studying in Rome.

My mother continues to speak fondly of both the gift, and the brother.

 

Originally published March 2010, via WordPress blog ‘Perils and Parallels‘

I have a Vote.

We live in a time, of widespread political awareness, and widespread political apathy – and thinking that there is no choice we would choose, seek to represent our apathy with indifference.

Political parties that would seek to raise the British identity on a pedestal, and lambast the influence of external political, economic and cultural influences, will revel in that absence of voluntary participation. I perceive those political parties, with nationalist interests, are shy of expressing their whole intent, and if we are not more demanding of them to express their political mandate, to respond to our direct enquiries, we may regret letting them claim the political power they seek.

 

Our time.

I searched this morning, with vague effort, to seek an assertion of ‘What is History?’, and since the search term I used was also the title of a book, the following statement was found, and suited the opinion I wanted to assert. The philosopher of history Michael Stanford has claimed E.H.Carr “insisted that the historian cannot divorce himself from the outlook and interests of his age (sic.)” (Stanford 1994: 86).

In the context of finding something that “suited my needs”, I appear to sustain Carr’s words, that however much one may plead or argue for open mindedness, as soon as an individual seeks to represent a conclusion, they have aligned with an opinion, and made it their own. I don’t think that denies, or confirms events by accurate or inaccurate evidence. Rather, it aligns with the philosophical outlook, that what we perceive to be true can be altogether more important, than what we can establish is actually true.

My motive for this consideration, follows the final episode of ‘Our Mothers, Our Fathers’ via BBC2 in the UK, although the series/film has concluded earlier in the year elsewhere in Europe. I watched, more attuned to, and concerned for, the characters caught up in the period, than the historical events they are party to. The five friends are inevitable representatives of our historical image of Nazi Germany – brothers torn by familial expectations, drawn into war by national duty; a beautiful would be chanteuse torn between love & success; an artisan labelled by fate and a totalitarian state, destined to suffer; and a naïve, caring daughter of Germany, fraternally trusting that her charismatic peers will protect her through life. They are the youth of their day, and not so far removed from the youth of any generation.

Germany in the 20s & 30s hoped to be a reborn state, artistically open minded, creatively flamboyant and politically inspired to reclaim their identity from the aristocratic arrogance that led them to World War I. As a people, they desired leadership & freedom, from an oppression born of the post war sanctions. Humanity, as it seems to me, desires this most of the time; it is not the fault of nationality, or history. Those characters we see in episode one, optimistically embrace a momentary escape from 1941, do not seem to be representative of Nazi Germany. If they are products of the Hitler Youth, as was suggested by the BBC2 debate ‘Generation War: Fact or Fiction‘, it is false representation to suggest these friends were friends at all. Maybe I misunderstood the tone of the expert, but it seemed to me, he was applying a generalisation to a whole generation of people, because the evidence said so. My question to him: what if no evidence exists? Philosophically, the tree still falls over, but we didn’t see it fall. A generation of Germans did not speak of their transit from one oppressor to another, though historians may put forward evidence to the contrary. Clever perpetrators of war crimes, positioned themselves to survive, witnesses to war crimes often did not, and in the pre-war and post-war environments, did those who were caught up in political manoeuvres such as the Hitler Youth believe the doctrine, or did they not realise what the consequences would be for their participation? Would a Government directive in the UK, to oppress those of a particular sexual orientation, or racial background make me a bigot overnight, or would I remain the person I am today? Is it inconceivable that in not speaking up, any ‘evidence’ of someone remaining friends with, or protecting friends was lost? Put another way, if the story told is based only on evidence, can we be absolutely sure that the whole story is being told?

In my lifetime, governments have fallen, totalitarian states have collapsed, yet the existence of hatred towards national, cultural, social, racial, and human stereotypes continues. Cruelty continues. The prospect of violence towards one another continues, and although we perceive it to be unlikely, unacceptable, oppressive, inhumane, it continues. We perceive it as a minority occurrence, but we cannot always know, and whilst laws are made, so are laws flouted. The crimes of war committed by our five friends, occur through circumstance and fear, and isolated from one another, they act to survive. They act as humans will act. What ignorance do we display, to presume that Berlin, 1941 was any different, from Berlin 2014. Or any place on earth, in any time of life. It seems to me that one might pick up Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’, and re-consider how every generation seeks to survive. I watch ‘Our Mothers, our Fathers’, and I see human experience that I would not wish repeated, whether or not we treat it as history, or opinion.

Perception, is how these hatreds thrive. Should it not be the first weapon of choice, when we question where our future lies?