Welcome to Letters from Quotidia Hologram 5. Smart people come in all shapes and sizes, don’t they? Most of us would consider ourselves pretty smart if, say, we were smarter than 90 percent of the human race. And if we were in the top decile of income distribution, most of us would consider ourselves well-off.

But then there are those who are really, really smart and those who are really, really rich- who occupy the top 0.01% of intelligence and income. If you have an income north of US$7 million every single year and assets worth more than US$110 million then welcome to the .01% Club. It’s harder to be anything like as precise about IQ. The validity of the very concept has been called into question.

There is no close correlation between IQ scores and achievement, broadly conceived. Similarly there is no lock with ethical behaviour or morality. Teenage thrill-killers Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold possessed intelligence at the top of the scale and the Milwaukee cannibal Jeffry Dahmer, and serial rapist and murderer Ted Bundy were also highly intelligent. The less said about them the better, as also, the avaricious and amoral Tech Bros. But the Tech Bros will figure in the first new song of this post!

However, there is no doubt that we are indebted to those highly gifted men and women who have used their brilliance to the advantage of humankind. Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci spring to mind. Sabrina Pasterski, a Cuban-American prodigy aged 33 has a marvellous life story which is worth delving into, but for this post I am particularly intrigued by her research in the field of theoretical physics that posits that the universe may be a hologrammatic projection: that everything that exists from the smallest particle to the largest celestial object could be encoded on a two-dimensional template.

Now, don’t ask me to explain the mathematical underpinnings, or anything else about this theory. I regularly find difficulty in reconciling my bank statements to my advantage! I spent how much? On What? Oh, right…I remember, now. What I will set before you, is that this Letter, Hologram 5, is encoded on a two-dimensional template- which is the screen glowing before me and it will project into cyberspace when I press the appropriate button. What dimensional shape it ends up, who can tell? While this doesn’t put me up there with the 0.01 percenters-it’s something!

Also, this Letter is, hologrammatically, linked closely to Letter 100 posted on 1st July 2021 and reposted just over a year ago. It’s title, Dumb, is at the other end of the spectrum from the prodigies discussed in this Letter- numbered 305 in the sequence. But sometimes the spectrum bends into a horseshoe shape and the two extremes end up rather close together. I think the old song, Dumb, which I include here, and the new song, Smart, demonstrate the truth of that observation. FirstDumb, then Smart. [insert songs]

Why do I persevere with these Letters? After all, most of the pandemic podcasters, as well as the painters, quilters, crafters and bakers have resumed a normal life! After I retired twelve years ago, I started a blog where I stated as a rationale, “Quentin Bega was born in the middle of the last century and then stumbled into the present one with something more to say and sing about.” And every time I  thought I had reached a terminus, I still had more to say and sing about.

Last year, I attended an exhibition, Cezanne to Giacometti, in Canberra at the National Gallery of Australia, featuring a who’s who of the luminaries of the Modern Art movement, including Picasso, Matisse and Braque. A wonderful and impactful event. But the artist who impressed me most deeply? Paul Klee. So, every time I am tempted to sit back and read a book, do a crossword and maybe potter about in the garden as the sum total of my remaining life, I recall that Paul Klee, when confronted with approaching death from the autoimmune disease, scleroderma, reacted by creating 1253 drawings and images in 1939, including numerous images containing children.

One of these, Ein Kinderspiel, Child’s Play, provides the inspiration for the final song of the post. I quote from the essay accompanying the artwork in the exhibition catalogue, now, “The girl in Child’s Play is floating over a farmyard with fragmentary symbols in black paint…Klee suggests that life merely leaves its traces in the sand…life with all its desires for love and freedom passes away and is dispersed by the winds…Art…plays an innocent game with its subjects. Just as a child at play imitates us, we also imitate at play the forces which created and create the world.” I use that last sentence of the essay as the chorus of my song.

I have quoted before, the following lines from the great Immortality Ode by William Wordsworth, but they are particularly pertinent in this context: The well-known line, The child is father of the man; is part of the epigraph of the poem, which begins, /Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:/The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,/Hath had elsewhere its setting,/ And cometh from afar:/Not in entire forgetfulness,/ And not in utter nakedness,/But trailing clouds of glory do we come/From God, who is our home:/Heaven lies about us in our infancy!/Shades of the prison-house begin to close/Upon the growing Boy,// Ignore this boy crying Wolf! In future, I’ll just keep writing “until life, with all its desires…, passes away and is dispersed by the winds.” [insert song]

As a postscript do you remember at the end of 2025 Time magazine’s person of the year? The image on the cover was of 8 Tech Bros and Sistahs supposedly sitting on a steel girder high above Manhattan, aping that famous 1932 photograph of construction workers having their lunch break on a steel girder- for real! They were building the Manhattan skyline, representing, it could be argued, the pinnacle of human achievement at that time. Does anyone else register the savage irony? The architects of AI as builders of anything human? Seems to me they represent the very antithesis of what humanity is all about. ‘Nuff said; I’m in my old man shouting at clouds phase. It will pass, as will all things, but until next time when, God willing, we meet again in Quotidia- do, please, take care.  

 Dumb (words and music Quentin Bega)

Here it comes again, a song without an end

The words don’t mean a thing except to say I am

Just someone any someone singing into space

No sense of discipline I’m generally off my face

Dumb doo doo dumb dumb doo doo dumb doo doo dumb

Dumb doo doo dumb dumb doo doo dumb doo doo dumb

Here it comes again, a play without a spark

With characters so vile, don’t meet them after dark

The language of the sewer masquerades as art

Short-circuit energy there’s movement but no heart

Dumb doo doo dumb dumb doo doo dumb doo doo dumb

Dumb doo doo dumb dumb doo doo dumb doo doo dumb

Here it comes again, a painting with no point

The only thing that’s clear- its purpose, to anoint

A no-talent hopeless dauber dragging in a buck

If you’ve got sensibility, you’re out of luck

Dumb doo doo dumb dumb doo doo dumb doo doo dumb

Dumb doo doo dumb dumb doo doo dumb doo doo dumb

Ooh, you’re dumb, you’re so dumb

Here you come again, bringing in the new

That quality is crap, there’s only points of view

If I could understand you I would pin the lie

The chorus of this song’s the sum of my reply

Dumb doo doo dumb dumb doo doo dumb doo doo dumb

Dumb doo doo dumb dumb doo doo dumb doo doo dumb

You’re so dumb…you’re dumb….dumb

Smart (words and music Quentin Bega)

Int: Cmaj7 Dm7 Em7 Dm7 Ver: C F-2 G7 Am G7 F Chor: Bb Eb-2 F Eb F Eb Dm7

Tell me again how you reached the top of this vast pile

Tell me again how you remained humble all the while

You vanquished the opposition showed them what was what

How clearly, they’re inferior and clearly you are not

Tell me again how you achieved this on your own

Tell me again how you deserve a golden throne

If only your true worth was seen your joy would be complete

That would put the icing on your enemies’ defeat

Show me your etchings! You want to show me the view

Wine me and dine me and seduce me too

I think I’ll take a rain check; I’ve got something else to do

And that something else, baby, does not include you

Don’t tell me anymore how really smart you are

Don’t tell me anymore how you’re a superstar

I know the world where you exist has no appeal for me

The price I’d pay is much too high I’d rather just be free

Don’t tell me anymore that I am missing out

Don’t tell me anymore because I am in no doubt

That what you have to offer is illusory at best

I would find no peace there I’d be just a mess

Show me your etchings! You want to show me the view

Wine me and dine me and seduce me too

I think I’ll take a rain check; I’ve got something else to do

And that something else, baby, does not include you

And that something else, baby, does not include you

                                                    …it does not include you

Child’s Play (words and music Quentin Bega)

Intro: C2 Am F2 G7sus Chorus: C Dm G7 F G C Verse: F C F C F C G C

Just as a child at play imitates us, we also imitate at play

the forces which created and create the world

The girl is floating over the farmyard

She’s not attached to anything below

The rooster crows that’s just what he does,

The girl is floating over it all

Flowers shimmer softly in the green grass

The yellow of the sun is beaming down

A red spiral spinning near her black hat

Its meaning is beyond our power to tell

Just as a child at play imitates us, we also imitate at play

the forces which created and create the world

Can we imitate this child as grown-ups

Sporting an eye that’s staring brown

The purple heart is visible and beating

The girl is floating over it all

Where will we next go in our journey

Where will this magic carpet go

Will we sing together in harmony

Or cry alone as darkness takes its toll

Just as a child at play imitates us, we also imitate at play

the forces which created and create the world

                                                            we also imitate at play

the forces which created and create the world

Credits: All written text, song lyrics andmusic (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone-songs Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia: Hologram 4. In previous posts I have dealt with some of the factors that prevent me from putting anything of worth down on the page: writers block, imposter syndrome and ennui to itemise the top three. In the depths of my mind, a small, shrill voice shrieks imposter frequently enough!

Ennui a.k.a boredom, a.k.a lethargy or just plain laziness, applies the brakes to creative output with monotonous regularity. But topping the charts is writers block. In a previous letter I characterised this affliction as a corpulent brute of a wrestler, a bully and coarsened version of myself who taunted me to get into the ring where he threatened to grind my face in a huge, glistening globule of mucus that he had spat contemptuously there when he saw me approaching.

Of course, I always seek for a way to avoid this glowering menace head on, and so now shall I retreat into considering what it is that impels us to create? I think the concept of the Muses is a good place to start. According to Greek Reporter.com they began their lives as nymphs that manifested as whispers in the ears of those who invoked them. The ancient writer Hesiod called them…the nine muses: Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Thalia, Terpsichore, and Urania.

Calliope is the oldest of the Muses and nicknamed the one with the beautiful voice since she taught Achilles how to sing. Clio is the Muse of history and is also credited as the creator of the guitar. Erato is the Muse of poetry, particularly romantic poetry. Euterpe is the Muse of music. Melpomene is one of the two Muses of the theatre, and she is the Muse of tragedy. Thalia is the other Muse of the theatre, and she is represented with a mocking smile. She is the Muse of comedy and poetry that evokes the natural world. Polyhymnia is the Muse of lyric poetry and dance. Terpsichore is the Muse of light verse and also dance and is the mother of the Sirens who, with their singing, lure sailors to their doom. Urania, the youngest of the nine is the Muse of astronomy, astrology and also mathematics.

All of these Muses I have invoked along the way, and they inspired me to take another path. So, disdaining to climb into the ring to be humiliated by the hulking brute waiting there for me, I sat at my electronic keyboard hoping that by setting down my guitar, my usual compositional aid, I would find a way forward. Lines from an astringent Denise Levertov poem, Goodbye to Tolerance, may serve to cleanse the palette before I begin,

Genial poets, pink-faced/ earnest wits—/ you have given the world/ some choice morsels,/gobbets of language presented/as one presents T-bone steak/and Cherries Jubilee. /  Goodbye, goodbye,/I don’t care/ if I never taste your fine food again, / neutral fellows, seers of every side… a gulf has split/the ground between us,/and you won’t wave, you’re looking/another way./We shan’t meet again—/unless you leap it, leaving/   behind you the cherished/   worms of your dispassion,/   your pallid ironies,/your jovial, murderous,/   wry-humoured balanced judgment,/leap over, un-/balanced?…/then/how our fanatic tears/would flow and mingle/ for joy … [insert song]

In the song, I imagine one or other of the Muses in a dance with me as I try to create a song or poem or even a lowly post. I so much prefer the idea of one of the lovely Muses abandoning me on the dance floor to that ogre that waits impatiently to body slam me in the wrestling ring. Anyway, I am indebted to whatever forces or entities there are out there that allow me to create something that, I maintain, would be impossible by dint of my endeavours alone.

I am not like those self-made people (usually but not only men) who take full credit for their success, owing no one on earth or elsewhere any part of their accomplishments. The Greeks, as always, have a word for it- hubris.  Examples abound throughout the history of humankind and- shame on us- aren’t we gleeful when we witness the crashing collapse of those people who hold themselves above the common herd and crow about their magnificence.

The Christian tradition also has examples of hubris: have a look at Gustave Dore’s depiction of the fall of Lucifer into Satan from John Milton’s Paradise Lost. If we read the parable of the two houses, one built on rock, the other sand from Matthew there, too, we find the results of hubris. And I don’t have to look far here in NSW where some property owners on the coast are learning to their cost the price of building ocean-view mansions on sand dunes as coastal erosion fuelled by climate change turns their beach-side paradises into hell.

So, these contemporary news accounts I have used as a modern setting of the parable of the house built on rock and the house built on sand. For the chorus of the song, I am indebted to these lines from the King James Version of Matthew: Chapter 7 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it. Perhaps the Spirit moved me to write the concluding song, And It Fell. Whatever the case may be, I am truly thankful for wherever source that inspiration came. [insert song] Until next we meet in Quotidia,  be thankful for the good things in life, take care, stay safe and be well.

Once a Pair of Swans (words and music Quentin Bega)

Intro:Cmaj7 A7aug Dm7 G13b9 Verse: C Em F G7 Middle 8: Am Em G G7

I have been waiting for you to come back

There is something I need to say to you

Is there a reason why you won’t look me

In the eye whenever we pass by

Your smile is frozen to your stiff face

As though fixed there by icy paint

Your words consist of empty trite phrases

Lacking emotion meaningless

Once a pair of swans we glided out across the floor

Laughing, pirouetting, like the dance would never end

But something made us stumble something made us fall

Apart with nothing to say

Now as I sit here at this piano

Broken pencils scattered all about

Manuscript paper stained crumpled and shredded

Lies in drifts all around my feet

The rhythms are splintered the rhymes are so clunky

Why should I go on going on

Blank eyed and weary and almost teary

Just waiting for the dam to break

Once a pair of swans we glided out across the floor

Laughing, pirouetting, like the dance would never ever end

But something made us stumble something made us fall

Apart with nothing to say, nothing today

And It Fell (words and music by Quentin Bega)

Intro: C2 G7sus Cmaj7 Chorus: Am Em C G F Verse Dm C G

The rain came down, and the flood rose up

The wind blew hard and beat upon the house

The rain came down, and the flood rose up

The wind blew hard and beat upon the house

And it fell, and it fell and it fell and it fell

And great was the fall of it

Welcome neighbour I see that you have moved in next to me

Can I give you some advice don’t take it as a slight

I notice that you plan to build your house upon the dune

To take full advantage of those sweeping ocean views

But if you think about it some, in the longer run

You should set your house upon the rock as I have done

Although the sun shines bright today that won’t always be

Make provision for a change the you or I can’t see

Forget it buddy my forever mansion I’ll erect

Upon the dune and it will fetch millions more I expect

Than your low squat house that hugs this ugly rock

You mind your own business, buddy, and keep to your own block

The rain came down, and the flood rose up

The wind blew hard and beat upon the house

The rain came down, and the flood rose up

The wind blew hard and beat upon the house

And it fell, and it fell and it fell and it fell

And great was the fall of it

And it fell, and it fell and it fell and it fell

And great was the fall of it

And great was the fall of it

Credits: All written text, song lyrics andmusic (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone-songs Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia: Hologram 3. I’m surprised at the number of roads there are in Quotidia, not to mention those that are referred to in that place of ordinary people, on occasion, encountering the extraordinary. The romance of roads, happenings on highways and the mystique of motorways have long had a grip on my imagination.

I can report some of the earliest words I spoke as related by my older brother. I was on a visit to Aruba with my mother and siblings in 1952 and the two or three-year-old me shouted, “I gonna hit dat big moo-cow wit my tik”, as I ran down the street in pursuit of an imaginary bovine waving a stick- at what? The nearest cattle available for such admonishment would have been many miles away, in Venezuela, across the Caribbean Sea.

In Podcasts 2 and 3, reposted last November, I reengaged with my love of roads of all sorts by referencing The Narrow Road to the Deep North by profound Japanese poet Basho, The Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman, and I covered that great country song, King of the Road by Roger Miller. AC/DC’s Highway to Hell and Chris Rea’s The Road to Hell also got a mention as did several Biblical roads! All in all, a roadworthy pair of podcasts.

I’ve posted hundreds of Letters over the years and hundreds of my own compositions but among all the genres I’ve sampled there is only one original blues song. From my mid-teens I have loved this form of music, buying albums of such luminaries as BB King, Booker T and the MGs, and Albert King, as well as the groups from the British Isles who were inspired by American bluesmen and women: Beatles and Stones, anyone?

But that blues song I wrote back in the early 1980s must have been getting more and more lonely because it reached out for company when I was putting together chords and ideas for the first song of this podcast. Over the years, I’ve got a lot out of African-American Langston Hughes’s poetry which treats themes such as racism, social justice, the day-to-day life of his people, with jazz, and blues rhythms infusing his verse.

His short story, On the Road, is too long to quote here but its surreal narrative about Sargeant, a black vagrant, during a depression winter in Reno reflects the themes which engaged the writer: Sargeant, turned away from various institutions where he is seeking shelter and a meal, pulls down the fabric of a church and finds himself on the road with Christ, who has come down from the cross. They chat awhile and then part ways. Christ says he’s heading for Kansas City. Sargeant ends up in jail, beaten and bloody and wondering if Christ ever, in fact, got to Kansas City. I thought I was going to write yet another gentle acoustic ballad but two blues songs, one 45 years-old and one still struggling to be born decided otherwise. Here it is, Baby You Decide.[insert song]

So, like a hardcase on a Harley, a 16-bar blues song comes roaring down the road and as the distinctive sound fades in the distance I wonder if it is heading for glory or something gorier. Easy Rider, anyone? I remember seeing the film at the tail-end of the sixties when the whole hippie schtick began to cloy and sicken, when flowers in flowing hair in San Francisco became blood flowing at Altamont Speedway. A lot of things were heading south at that time- Belfast was unravelling before my eyes, what had been a vibrant, music-filled city became a shut-off menacing labyrinth where opposing hatreds clashed in darkness. I was no longer a toddler chasing an imaginary cow in Aruba but an adult confronting the Minotaur now materialising in the streets of Belfast where primal emotions swamped rational thought.

What resources did I have to escape from that labyrinth? Was there a Princess Ariadne in my corner? Ah, yes. And she supplied the golden thread that led us to an Antipodean future, with many a mazy turning, of course! Case in point: the gravitational pull of family prompted our return to Northern Ireland where the hunger strikes of 1981 in the Maze prison near Lisburn occurred 10 years after Internment without trial in 1971 at which time we were living up the Whiterock Road. We could see the graffito on the cemetery wall across a cinder football pitch which we could read from our bedroom window, Is there a life before death?

The contemplation of this question resulted in our return to Australia in 1988, just in time for a bicentenary celebration that over the years has become more contentious. Just goes to prove that Minotaurs and Mazes are hard to get away from in this world. Ballads are in my DNA and insisted on representation in this post. And as random roads and nursery rhymes churned away in my head, a cautionary tale took form even though I know that the people such tales are aimed at are the least likely to pay any attention- as I can attest from my own personal history! What emerged from the churn was this next song entitled, Find the One. [insert song] Do we have the ability to choose or are we slaves to some form of predestination? I don’t know, but I proceed on the basis that we do have free will. Here are some nuggets for contemplation. In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the worst thing you can do is nothing. That’s US Prez Teddy Roosevelt. We are our choices. Jean Paul Sartre. Destiny is not a matter of chance; it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved. William Jennings Bryan. Last but…, What do you say?

Baby You Decide (words and music Quentin Bega)

Intro: C/// Verse: C F G7 Dm7 Chorus: Am Em Outro: Am7 em7 Dm7 G7 F G C

You say that you’ve got itchy feet and that you’re rarin’ to go

You want to head straight on out that door baby you’re ready to roll

You crave the air of the open road this dull life has taken its toll

You say you’ve never felt so bad, never ever felt so low

You want to hit the Yellow Brick Road or take the Highway to Hell

Wander on up Diagon Alley or along The Via Dolorosa

The Boulevard of Broken Dreams might just bring you closer

To where you want to be baby You Never Can Tell

And so, you start rolling like a boulder down a hill

At first, it’s exciting, oh baby such a thrill

But as it gathers pace it tumbles out of control

And you fear baby for your life and also for your soul

But nevertheless, you’ll never go back you say the die is cast

There are so many roads you want to go down and that’s a fact

The roads to Jericho and Damascus do attract

And you wonder which of all the roads will be your last

You wonder about diverging roads inside a yellow wood

What about the silk roads that lead from east to west

Which of all these myriad roads will prove to be the best

Which leads to perdition, and which leads to the good

Does the answer lie like dice shook in a cup

Which way will the thumbs point either down or up

And when all is said and done was it worth the ride

Baby there is no one but you to decide

Does the answer lie like dice shook in a cup

Which way will the thumbs point either down or up

And when all is said and done was it worth the ride

                                                            …Baby you decide

Find the One (words and music Quentin Bega)

Intro: C2 Ebmaj7 Abmaj7 Dbmaj7 Verse: C Dm G Cx4 Chorus: F Em F G G7

The nursery rhymes are there to save you from your careless self

The guardrails and guidelines are always put in place

To help you gauge a way past hazards you may find

Maybe here on earth or maybe up in outer space

Don’t think if you stray out past the sheepfold in the night

The shepherd will find you before the wolf has crushed your bones

The stars above will twinkle whether you are safe or not

Whether you’re in clover or a desert full of stones

Find the one find the one who’ll always see

A remedy for your pain and who will always be

A support for you through thick and thin

Whatever morass or predicament you’re in

Of course you won’t listen and neither did I too

There’s nothing like experience to drive a lesson home

Question all the rules is not a bad thing to do

Why should you stay put when you are free to roam

But should you find yourself stuck in some dead-end place

Remember that you always have a ready fall-back plan

Follow the golden thread back through the labyrinth

Retrace your steps on back to where it all began

Find the one find the one who’ll always see

A remedy for your pain and who will always be

A support for you through thick and thin

Whatever morass or predicament you’re in

Find the one find the one who’ll always see

A remedy for your pain and who will always be

A support for you through thick and thin

Whatever morass or predicament you’re in

 Credits: All written text, song lyrics andmusic (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone-songs Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.

 Welcome to Letters from Quotidia: Hologram 2. You are probably aware that, whatever you may have been led to believe, you’re back in Quotidia, or some iteration of it. As you know, it’s where ordinary people occasionally encounter the extraordinary.

Those of us with a Y chromosome know that there are certain rites of passage, some worthwhile, others more problematical, that males are traditionally expected to traverse, and that there are certain roles that go with the territory. An insult and putdown is the sneer, Call yourself a real man! The trolls that infest and dominate the manosphere depend on the fear that such an epithet engenders to swell their ranks from among the young and impressionable males of the species. But I don’t wish to waste any more space on such knuckle-draggers.

I spoke in Episode 3 of the Letters of how I felt “much more comfortable in antiquity, where information was hard-won and is best embodied by the legend of the Greek messenger, Pheidippides, who ran the 26 miles from Marathon to Athens in 490 BC with the news of the Athenian victory over the Persian forces. Ten years later Xerxes attempted to avenge the defeat. His campaign gave rise to that iconic symbol of heroic resistance against overwhelming odds- the battle of Thermopylae- where, outnumbered 20 to 1, the Spartans held the Persians at bay to the last man, under the leadership of Leonidas, their king.

The poet Simonides has left us with a few terse lines of poetry which have been a reminder to generations ever since of the courage of men who make the ultimate sacrifice for their country: Stranger passing by, tell the Lakedaimonians/ Here we lie, having obeyed their orders. I feel a certain loss, not to have experienced war. Is this an atavistic urge, I wonder?” Indeed, I have read in various places that you haven’t really lived until you have endured both imprisonment and warfare.

Well, I haven’t had to endure either- touch wood- but as a writer I have been able to vicariously partake of both in the wonderful world of the imagination. Aided, of course by writers such as Henry David Thoreau who nobly intones, Under a government who imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. And as for war, try these out for size: Only the dead have seen the end of war- Plato; War does not determine who is right- only who is left. – Bertrand Russell; The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him. – G. K. Chesterton.

I have written songs about war and armed conflict in previous letters. As I was preparing the notes for this letter, an image of an older soldier than the average age of combatants came into my head and I wrote a song with the title Mon Ami So Brave. Much as I would have liked him to flesh out as an exemplar in the G.K Chesterton mould, he manifested as a rather more flawed person, and I can only wonder why that may be. My song, featuring two men, references the trench warfare of WWI and present-day Ukraine as well as the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts [insert song]

You shouldn’t drink so much is a refrain that has echoed down the ages since the partner of a cave-dweller remonstrated with her man fermenting berries by the fire. It’s possible that a metro-troglodyte wagged a finger at a woman fermenter, but I’ll wager that the former scenario is much more prevalent. And talking about fermenting berries, gang-gang cockatoos in Australia are known for getting drunk on these and falling off their perches.

One could never imagine Emily Dickinson getting drunk and falling down. Indeed, she addressed this improbability in her poem, I taste a liquor never brewed: here it is, I taste a liquor never brewed –From Tankards scooped in Pearl –Not all the Frankfort Berries / Yield such an Alcohol!/Inebriate of air – am I –/And Debauchee of Dew –/Reeling – thro’ endless summer days –/From inns of molten Blue –/When “Landlords” turn the drunken Bee/Out of the Foxglove’s door –/When Butterflies – renounce their “drams” –/I shall but drink the more!/Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats –/And Saints – to windows run –/To see the little Tippler/Leaning against the – Sun!

Leaning against the sun: What a poet! To be intoxicated only through the senses by Nature’s glories has proved for me a bridge too far, so far. I regard it as a worthy aspiration, though. In LfQ Episode 3 I quoted from Seamus Heaney’s translation of The Yellow Bittern, by Cathal Buí Mac Giolla Ghunna, an 18th Century Irish poet. It can bear repeating here. Alas, Seamus Heaney left us in 2013, aged 74 so a special thought for him, now. The woman I love says to give it up now/ Or else I’ll go to an early grave,/ But I say no and keep resisting/ For taking drink’s what prolongs your days./ You saw for yourself a while ago/ What happened to the bird when its throat went dry;/ So my friends and neighbours, let it flow: / You’ll be stood no rounds in eternity…There are worse things in this world than the consolations of alcohol. I’ve written a song about this called, I Remain of Good Cheer. [insert song]

The enemies of Jesus called him a drunkard and glutton because He and his disciples wined and dined with tax collectors. But then, of course they had also lambasted His cousin, John the Baptist as a lunatic because he fasted and abstained from alcohol. Psalm 104 refers to wine that makes glad the heart of man while Ephesians says, be not drunk with wine. Ah well, you choose!

Mon Ami So Brave (Words and Music Quentin Bega)

Bm, Em, A, D, Bm, Em, A, D, F#m, Bm, D, A, Em, G, A

In this bombed out wine cellar stay awhile with me

My canteen’s been shot full of holes, I guess I’ve been as well

The battle’s raging round us still, I’d like to talk to you

Let me tell you what I have learned from our brief stay in Hell

I left my wife and family to sign up to the cause

To tell the truth I do not care what we are fighting for

To just escape the daily grind was foremost in my mind

The price of new experience, I guess is this foul war

I should have known better as I’m older than the rest

We carry all our aches and pains inside these uniforms

And bastards I thought left behind are now in charge of us

I should have known better than to believe in unicorns

My unit calls me “Padre”, say I look like some old priest

I just reply I’m rather like some devil sick of sin

They don’t care much for poetry, heavy metal’s more the go

As we pass along a bottle of forbidden bootleg gin

I volunteered to recce the old farmhouse we could see

From our trenches as big shells rained down upon the land

I saw the cellar door and charged in through it in a rush

And saw you sitting reading from that letter in your hand

                              (Instrumental verse)

The dust and grit have left me parched, if only you could find

A bottle of vin ordinaire inside this smoking grave

Then we could toast the life that all men seek to live on earth

But I killed you as you shot me too mon ami so brave

Yeah I killed you as you shot me too mon ami so brave

I Remain of Good Cheer (words and music Quentin Bega)

Key: G

Chorus: C G C G F G Am G Verse: Em Am Em Am Em Am Dm7 G

It may be I lie here outside my local bar

Although I’m in the gutter, my gaze is fixed on the North star

You wonder why I can’t be more like you my friend

Don’t be offended if I tell you that’s the bitter end

Imprisoned by gin and shackled by whiskey,

Gaoled by jelly shots, banged up by beer

Served time with wine, branded by brandy,

Despite all my cares I remain of good cheer

A waste of time and money the preachers all intone

But all I hear is a babble or just a tiresome moan

If we were perfect I think you’d run a country mile

With no one left to wag fingers at- the thought just makes me smile

Imprisoned by gin and shackled by whiskey,

Gaoled by jelly shots, banged up by beer

Served time with wine, branded by brandy,

Despite all my cares I remain of good cheer

I know you want a moral to the story I relate

Something about destiny, something about fate

But life you know can be messy with no rhythm or no rhyme

But a libation or two helps me get through, nothing’s more sublime

 I’m Imprisoned by gin and shackled by whiskey,

Gaoled by jelly shots, banged up by beer

Served time with wine, branded by brandy,

Despite all my cares I remain of good cheer

Imprisoned by gin and shackled by whiskey,

Gaoled by jelly shots, banged up by beer

Served time with wine, branded by brandy,

Despite all my cares I remain of good cheer

Despite all my cares I remain of good cheer…. I remain of good cheer

   Credits: All written text, song lyrics andmusic (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone-songs Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia: Hologram 1. You are, whatever you may have been told hitherto, back in Quotidia where ordinary people occasionally encounter the extraordinary. This is one of a series of Letters where each continuing Letter will be linked to one of the existing Letters, showing other facets of the original. This may manifest itself poetically, musically, thematically or some combination of them all.

As is to be expected, given the unreal nature of holograms (of which there will be 12 Letters attached), fractals (ditto), simulations (ditto), images (ditto) and singularities (ditto), there will be underlying and underpinning aspects to each of these surreal Letters which may not be immediately evident. However, these elements do not interfere with the meaning of the Letter but serve to add structure to it, the way a rhyme scheme gives structure to a sonnet, for example.

And talking of examples, a good example for every writer is the Roman poet, Horace, who wrote, in short: whether a peaceful old age waits for me/ or death circles with black wings, / rich, poor, at Rome, or if thus chance bids, an exile, / whatever the complexion of my life, I will write. // And so, like Horace, I will continue to write, notwithstanding the clarion call in the previous Letter that stipulated a final anchorage for the whole series! But I must tell you that writers dissimulate as though compelled by the very activity of putting words down upon a page.  

Is that how you justify your about-face, I hear you ask? Well, yeah, nah, look, these holograms, fractals, simulations, images and singularities, aren’t real, are they? The names suggest they are mere insubstantial fabrications, after all.  And your reply? Weasel words! Maybe. Perhaps what I do, then, is similar to what the carpenter in the Book of Wisdom does with a piece of wood,

A carpenter may cut down a suitable tree /and skilfully scrape off all its bark, / And deftly plying his art / produce something fit for daily use, / And use the scraps from his handiwork /in preparing his food and have his fill; /Then the good-for-nothing refuse from these remnants, /crooked wood grown full of knots, / he takes and carves to occupy his spare time. / This wood he models with mindless skill, / and patterns it on the image of a human being / or makes it resemble some worthless beast. / When he has daubed it with red and crimsoned its surface with red stain, / and daubed over every blemish in it, / He makes a fitting shrine for it / and puts it on the wall, fastening it with a nail. //

Or, as the first stanza of Horace’s satire, Priapus, has it, There was a time when I was nothing but / A useless figwood log. Some carpenter / Couldn’t make up his mind which I should be, /A stool or a Priapus, but finally he / Decided to make me a god. I am a god, /Chief scarer-off of birds and also thieves. / My right hand warns off thieves and so does this /Big red obscene pole sticking out of my crotch. /As for the mischievous birds, they get scared off / By the flapping reed attached to the top of my head. / It frightens them all away from the garden I guard. // I have written a song based on the preceding words from the Book of Wisdom and Horace called Idols of Wood, [insert song]

“They say,” is a phrase that, if not exactly weasel words, has the power to suggest verisimilitude in the clauses that follow. We met Adam Lindsay Gordon in the first Letter from Quotidia, who left us a fragment of poetry that is an example of this, They say that poison-sprinkled flowers / Are sweeter in perfume / Than when, untouched by deadly dew, / They glowed in early bloom // They say that men condemned to die / Have quaffed the sweetened wine / With higher relish that the juice / Of the untampered vine. // They say that in the witch’s song, / Though rude and harsh it be, / There blends a wild, mysterious strain / Of weirdest melody. // And I believe the devil’s voice / Sinks deeper in our ear / Than any whisper send from Heaven, / However sweet and clear. //

The song that closes out this Letter has two sources of inspiration. First, the lines from Adam Lindsay Gordon you just heard, and second, the song that featured in the first Letter from Quotidia, Everybody’s Story, where a son visits his father in a nursing home who asks to see his grandkids, and who admits to the efficacy of wine as a prompter of reminiscence. The new song is from the point of view of the son’s partner who has her own views on what should transpire and who, perhaps, has taken steps to achieve her aim. Shades of Lady Macbeth! Here is Sweeten the Wine, My Love. [insert song]

And oftentimes, to win us to our harm, / The instruments of darkness tell us truths, / Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s / In deepest consequence. So says Macbeth’s best friend, Banquo, who is wary of the witches’ alluring words promising Macbeth the Scottish crown. A little water clears us of this deed, Lady Macbeth coolly observes after her husband has murdered King Duncan in his bed. Turns out not to be the case, though, as Macbeth sets out on a killing spree in which the torrents of blood unleashed on the land are memorably captured in the lines where he says. I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.  The fruits of victory turn to ashes in his mouth, and that of his wife too. The mistake too many human beings make is thinking that they can negotiate with the forces of darkness and come out in front. Soul for sale anyone? Best not, eh!

Idols of Wood (words and music Quentin Bega) Intro: Gmaj7 Cmaj7 G2 E7sus

V. 1,2,4: Am D7 G Bm A7-2 C G C G C G Bm D D7

Bridge: Eb Bb Eb Bb Eb Bb F Eb Bb Eb Bb Eb Bb F D D7

Greetings to my brother who is nailed up on this wall

Likewise to another watching these surrounding fields

Why do you seem useless, disregarded and uncalled

Does anyone else know how it feels

You once could proudly claim a justly honoured place

You once were reverenced as icons in this home

Now you vacantly wait here staring dimly into space

Now you have lower status than the garden gnome

At one time you were cared for as garlands in festoons

Draped your painted forms under full moons

You were offered libations of finest wine and choicest food

Now there’s nothing for you to do but brood

Call to mind all those times when people paid you praise

Call to mind all those times when central to the story

Of this family’s history when you were in their gaze

You were part of that time of fame and glory

But that was long ago and there is nothing left

Now I regard you as foretellers of my fate

I am fading to grey now I am also bereft

And I am approaching my use-by-date

Sweeten the Wine, My Love (Words and music Quentin Bega)

Intro: C2 Am7 Abmaj7 G7sus

Verses: C Dm F G-2 Am Em Dm G F C Dm G

He asked for the kids you say he misses their soft smiles

But I’m damned if I will send them in to him again to hold

Why is he hanging on so long what’s in it for us all

The cost of that elders’ home I tell you leaves me cold

Assisted dying is in vogue I saw it on the news

Why doesn’t he keep up-to-date like we all have to do

Next time you visit you should bring the subject up

After all he may just need another point of view

Listen to the witches sing as widdershins they spin

Around the bubbling cauldron as they invite you in

To their charmed circle to embrace you as their kin

Listen to the witches sing as widdershins they spin

                            (intro interlude)

There isn’t that much point to him I think you would agree

His incoherent rambles are embarrassing to hear

That’s why I won’t go back there and neither will the kids

We can’t go on like this I think that much is clear

    (Instrumental chorus)

So next time you go back there bring in this jug of wine

I know he likes full-bodied reds and that will be your task

Encourage him to drink deep as much as he can take

Leave the wine jug with me now is all that I will ask

Listen to the witches sing as widdershins they spin

Around the bubbling cauldron as they invite you in

To their charmed circle to embrace you as their kin

Listen to the witches sing as widdershins they spin

Listen to the witches sing as widdershins they spin

Credits: All written text, song lyrics and music (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone-songs Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.

This is the outro to the Weekend Supplements and, indeed, the epitaph to the Letters from Quotidia as a whole. The enterprise kicked off in January of 2021 and kicked the bucket at the end of June 2026. In essence, the three hundred Letters comprised several hundred songs, several hundred thousand scripted words and approximately 85 hours of podcast time.

Its genesis was in a plague year, and it stuttered to an end about a year before the singularity predicted for mid-2027 when AI will deliver us to, what? Heaven, Hell, or just a continuing purgatory of disappointed dreams. Speaking of which, a remarkable man who knew all about disappointed dreams was Gerard Manley Hopkins who wrote one of the great poems on this theme: Thou art indeed just, Lord.

Written just months before his death in 1889, struck down by typhus aged just 44, this Petrarchan sonnet radiates anguish and has left us with several memorable quotations- Why do sinners’ ways prosper? Birds build- but not I build; Time’s eunuch and, not breed one work that wakes. Let’s hear it in full, Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend/With thee; but sir, so what I plead is just. / Why do sinners’ ways prosper? And why must/ Disappointment all I endeavour end? / Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend, / How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost/ Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust/Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend, / Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes/ Now, leaved how thick! Laced they are again/ With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes/ Them; birds build- but not I build; no, but strain, / Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.//

Hopkins found neither the fame nor the credit he deserved until decades after his death. But maybe he had some inkling that all was not lost in the slough of despond that accompanied his last days when we recall that his last words were, I am so happy. I am so happy. Which brings me to the first song of this post. Written by Johnny Nash in the aftermath of cataract surgery, it is a true hymn of thanksgiving. To have sight restored, either through the agency of a Biblical miracle or ophthalmic surgery is truly life-changing. I think of the impact on so many by the work of Fred Hollows and his foundation. Over thirty years, more than three million people have had their sight restored. This legacy beats the pants off the builders of golden ballrooms and other vanity projects. I Can See Clearly Now, is the song I’ll present now. [insert song]

There are no neat endings in life: that’s why we have songs and stories to supply these whenever we feel the need for them. Sharing a birthday drink with my brother-in-law, he told me about a mate he worked alongside with for many years who, learning he has terminal cancer, has arranged a neat end. He has approval for voluntary assisted dying and has said farewell to his family and friends as well as having ordered his affairs. He is not in pain, but he intends to bow out this weekend. Hearing this gave me pause. In a similar situation, I’m not sure I would be able to resist the temptation to drink the potion that puts you to sleep-everlasting.

In the Book of Wisdom, chapter four we read, he who was transported- snatched away lest wickedness pervert his mind or deceit beguile his soul: for the witchery of paltry things obscures what is right and the whirl of desire transforms the innocent mind. I’ve got to admit, that for more than fifty years I was beguiled with the witchery of paltry things. In my case, the extent to which right has been obscured and how much innocence is left of a mind steeped in consumerism for so long is moot.

Also, how much credit can you claim if your liver doesn’t allow you to roister quite as uproariously as hitherto? Slowing down is an inevitable accompaniment of age so you can’t really make a virtue out of being able to demonstrate a sedate and decorous pace through life. The much-vaunted claim of wisdom that age imbues one with is really just a struggle to find the right (or, indeed, any) word but which is sometimes interpreted as sagacious pondering of a deeper mystery by those who should know better.

You all are familiar with those before and after photographs, illustrations and testimonials of how your- paltry?- life can be immeasurably improved if only you can stir yourself to whip out your credit card and take out a subscription (money-back-guaranteed, of course!) to the latest miracle cure, panacea or answer to your most fervent prayers for self-transcendence. I must admit that I’ve fallen for the occasional boondoggle in my time but mostly have avoided such scams- more through timidity and luck than good judgement, it must be said! So, I now crave your indulgence while I present to you the final song of this post and, indeed, the whole series. Have you guessed the name of the song? Here is Before and After. [insert song]

Thanks to that small, intrepid band accompanying me through Quotidia over the past months and years. Knowing you were there has enabled me to continue with the project when ennui or writers block or imposter syndrome threatened to scupper the Letters long before this final harbour and anchorage.  And a final word to any in my familial line who has come across the testimony in these letters: you don’t need to pore through them forensically to get a pretty clear sense of who I was. A handful of the Letters will reflect, hologrammatically, the themes and preoccupations of my Quotidian life. Adieu.

I Can See Clearly Now (Words and Music Johnny Nash)

D, G, D/D,G, A/D, G, D,/C, G D/C,G, D/-2 F, C/F, A, C#m, G, C#m, G, C, Bm, A, A

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind

It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-shiny day
It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-shiny day

I think I can make it now, the pain is gone
All of the bad feelings have disappeared
Here is the rainbow I’ve been prayin’ for

It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-shiny day

Look all around, there’s nothin’ but blue skies
Look straight ahead, nothin’ but blue skies

I can see clearly now, the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind

It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-shiny day
It’s gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-shiny day

Gonna be a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-shiny day
Oh, what a bright (bright), bright (bright)
Sun-shiny day…

Before and After (words and music by Quentin Bega)

Intro: C2, A7+, Dm7, G13b9

Stanza A: C, G, C, C x2/F, F, C, C/C, G, C, C/

Stanza B: Am, Am, Em, Em,x2/F, F, C, C,/C, G, C, C/

Beforehand I came trailing clouds of glory

Placed here in this world to sing my story

Like everyone set down here before me

I tried so hard to build my territory

And so it goes and everyone knows

There is pain and there is pleasure in abundant measure

And as you search for something worth believing

Avoid the traps laid at your feet deceiving

Meanwhile watch life wax and watch life flicker

Stand aside and let the others bicker

Don’t be sucked in it’ll make you sicker

Let love be your watchword- that’s the kicker

And if you find you’re lost and blind

And stumbling through a fog that hides all that is true

Summon that light that shall restore your sight

My sons and daughters cast your bread upon the waters

(8-bar interlude: C2, A7+, Dm7, G13b9 x2)

Afterwards will any one remember

Either in fair June or cold December

Will judging angels preserve my name or it dismember

Will I be a living flame or dying ember

 Mmm, a living flame or a dying ember

Oh Lord will I be a living flame or just a dying ember

Letters from Quotidia (various forms of nomenclature)

In essence, the three hundred Letters comprise several hundred songs, several hundred thousand scripted words and approximately 85 hours of podcast time.

A listing of the Letters as they rolled out under various names.

120 Letters from Quotidia

30 Postcards from Quotidia

20 Extra Letters from Quotidia

04 Making the Living Poetry

10 And Leave Him There

16 Additional Letters from Quotidia

20 Postscripts from Quotidia

10 Footnotes from Quotidia comprising:

                Sword of Damocles 1-4

                Covers for Castaways 1-4

                Slainte 1

                Slainte 2

01 Trailer for Podcasts 2023

20 Podcasts from Quotidia

01 ANZAC Special

15 Radio Quotidia Letters comprising:

                The Blues 1-5

                Last Things 1-5

                Lost and Found 1-5

01 New Years Eve 2023 Letter

16 Letters from Quotidia 2024

01 Letters from Quotidia 2025 Episode Zero

01 Introduction to Letters from Quotidia Weekend Supplements

16 Weekend Supplements

01 Outro to Weekend Supplements

Credits: All written text, song lyrics andmusic (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone-songs Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia 2026 Weekend Supplement 16. This is a notable occasion- to me, anyway. It marks the 300th Letter from Quotidia. As usual, I discovered this by chance- I had flubbed the numbering of the Letters in my documentation- not that anyone else would have noticed because of the shifting nomenclature adopted by me over the roll out of the posts during the past few years.

If I had a cake and candles and the inclination, I would mark the occasion more tangibly, but this reference will have to do. Now to matters more consequential. Over the course of the Letters I have covered quite a few songs remaining nonchalant as to whether I had the chops and vocal capacity to cope with the task at hand. But one group remained off-limits: The Beatles.

In the summer of 1963 my brother, Brendan, visited us in Aruba clutching the Beatles first LP, Please, Please Me. It was a revelation- expat Brits found excuses to come round to welcome Brendan to Aruba, but really it was just to hear the LP which they had heard about from relatives in Blighty in the months since its release. Thirteen-year-old me, of course, basked in the reflected glory.

Sixty-three year later, when I’m at St Marys Leagues Club in western Sydney, the dance floor fills whenever a band plays McCartney’s composition, I Saw Her Standing There, which is better known by its opening words- She Was Just Seventeen! This is the track that opens that epoch-shaping LP. The closing track, Twist and Shout, with John Lennon hoarsely rasping the lyrics, also has the ability to attract dancers of all ages to the floor.

The reason Lennon was hoarse was that it was the end of a gruelling day’s recording where The Beatles set down fourteen songs for George Martin. One day. One album. One phenomenal group. And they have formed a significant part of my personal playlist from that time. Oscar Wilde tells us that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I have paid McCartney this compliment by writing a response based on his song, When I’m 64, twelve years ago when I turned that age. In the Letters from Quotidia posted on 20th July 2021 and reposted on 15th July 2025 you may hear this homage.

But as for covering an actual Beatles song? Well, not until now. As usual, a confluence of factors influenced the decision. First, the song I have been dithering about covering is, Let It Be, which features a special woman named Mary. Second, I have written a song about three women named Mary which can be heard as the second song of the podcast. Last, it is- sort of- a special occasion: the 300th Letter, so maybe I get a dispensation? My version is simple- no harmonies, chorusing, soloing, elaborate arrangements or vocal excellence like Paul’s. Just straight. [insert song]

The Letters from Quotidia have had a few false endings- like one of those Beethoven symphonies. And is this another? The project was originally slated to run for 30 weeks in 2021 totalling 150 posts. And here we are nearly five years later with 300 of the things!

Twenty years ago I sat around a backyard fire with a friend, and we were talking about how little we knew about our forebears. I knew details about my grandparents and even a few about great-grandparents but the rest was a blank. My nephew, the family historian, had discovered that my great-uncle had fought and died with Australian forces on the Western Front in 1917.

That got me thinking that maybe I should jot some stuff down about the themes and preoccupations of my life just in case a future family historian might want to delve into what it was we were all about. So, the Letters are, in fact, the culmination of that process. In advance then, let’s set out a few words about Quentin Bega as might be intoned over the casket before it is lowered into the burial ground or trundled into the flames of the crematorium.

Yeah, Quentin was a modest man with, frankly, a lot to be modest about. He lived and died in well-deserved obscurity. Not that he would have minded in the least. By the time eternity was ready to embrace him the flames of youthful ambition had well and truly burned out. He asks that we retire quickly to a place of hospitality and share a meal, a few laughs, and a drink or two in his memory. Vale.

I note that he still has a gigabyte of storage left in his podcast account so don’t be surprised if there is the occasional, the sporadic, dropping of yet another Letter from Quotidia. On the front page of his blog he noted that he was born in the middle of the last century and then stumbled into the present one with something more to say and sing about. So what does he have to say and sing about, in the final original composition?

There’s a fine old Scottish folk song called The Four Marys which details what happened to the four ladies-in-waiting to Mary, Queen of Scots. My song has one fewer Mary, and my point of reference is John ch.19: v.25. Although the Catholic Church is heavily patriarchal, there is no doubt in my mind that women have sustained it down the ages.

In John we read of three women named Mary at the foot of the Cross. The first verse of my song is about Mary of Clopas, who may be related to the mother of Jesus. The second verse features Mary Magdalene, whose name was probably blackened in history by men jealous of her closeness to Jesus. The third Mary is the Mother of God. [insert song] When I looked at my documentation, I noticed that this is my 200th original composition! A hint that this just might be an appropriate terminus for the Letters.

Let It Be ( The Beatles Words and Music Paul McCartney)

C              G                 Am     Am7  Fmaj7    F6

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me

C                 G              F  (Hit E note on D string)(Hit D String) C

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

    C             G                Am       Am7      Fmaj7    F6

And in my hour of darkness, She is standing right in front of me

C                 G              F  (Hit E note on D string)(Hit D String) C

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

        Am         G          F          C

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be

C                G              F (Hit E note on D string)(Hit D String) C

Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

     C               G               Am     Am7    Fmaj7  F6

And when the broken hearted people, Living in the world agree

C                G              F  (Hit E note on D string)(Hit D String) C

There will be an answer, let it be

    C                  G                Am      Am7         Fmaj7     F6

But though they may be parted, There is still a chance that they will see

C                G              F  (Hit E note on D string)(Hit D String) C

There will be an answer, let it be

       Am         G          F          C

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be

C                G              F (Hit E note on D string)(Hit D String) C

There will be an answer, let it be

       Am         G          F          C

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be

C                G              F (Hit E note on D string)(Hit D String) C

Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

       Am         G          F          C

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be

C                G              F (Hit E note on D string)(Hit D String) C

Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

    C                 G                Am      Am7        Fmaj7     F6

And when the night is cloudy, there is still a light that shines on me

C                G             F  (Hit E note on D string)(Hit D String) C

Shine on till tomorrow, let it be

  C              G               Am     Am7  Fmaj7    F6

I wake up to the sound of music, Mother Mary comes to me

C                 G              F  (Hit E note on D string)(Hit D String) C

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

       Am         G          F          C

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be

C                G              F (Hit E note on D string)(Hit D String) C

Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

       Am         G          F          C

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be

C                G              F (Hit E note on D string)(Hit D String) C

Whisper words of wisdom, let it be

The Three Marys (Words and Music by Quentin Bega)

int. G7sus/Ebmaj7/Dm7/C2; C/Am/F/G//Fm/Em/Dm/G-2; C2/Dm7/G/C-2  C/Am/F/G//Fm/Em/Dm/G; G7sus/Ebmaj7/Dm7/C2; repeat for each verse

Yes I am the most obscure of all the three

Women who stood under that awful hanging tree

Challenging and dark sometimes the road I won’t pretend

Ministering to Him until the bitter end

But that set me on the path to that lofty place

Where for eternity I see His shining face        

You say you’ve earned a place and that you really care

But at Golgotha I did not see you there

I am of Magdala seven devils bound me strong

Until He freed me with a word and bid me come along

And after Him I followed and then that fateful dawn

I ran up to the gaping tomb discovering Him gone

And that set me on the path to that lofty place

Where for eternity I see His shining face        

You say you’ve earned a place and that you really care

But at Golgotha I did not see you there

Pierced by seven sorrows I’m the Mater Dolorosa

We are the Marys three drawing all you closer

To the end my Son has planned for every single soul

To dwell forever in the light where you are fully whole

And I have long been here with Him in this holy place

Where I invite you- come and share in His shining face

So if you make appeal through me and if you truly care

I will take you by the hand and I will lead you there

                                             …and I will lead you there

Credits: All written text, song lyrics andmusic (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone-songs Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia 2026 Weekend Supplement 15. Last weekend the theme was Heroes. I suppose this post is an extension of that. I cast my mind back to when I was twelve at my aunt Annie’s place in Glenariff, in my view, the most beautiful of the Glens of Antrim, where her husband Felix had a timber business beside the small river that emptied into Red Bay.

We were visiting from Aruba that summer and my eldest brother, Jim, was singing along to a song about the Yukon popular at that time in Ireland, North to Alaska, by Johnny Horton. The references to the Yukon piqued my interest because, at that time, I was reading Jack London’s novels and short stories. The Call of the Wild made a deep impression on me, and I still think of it as a classic. The story of the bond between human and animal is as old as our species.

A large dog, Buck, stolen from his pampered life in California, is subjected to maltreatment as he is broken in and sold as a sled dog in the Klondike. There he passes from situation to situation, enduring the hardships of learning to be part of a team. He bonds finally with John Thornton, who rescues him from his previous incompetent owners. Buck reverts to the call of the wild when John Thorntom is killed by native Indians and subsequently leads a wolf pack into legend.

Now, this bare-bones synopsis does not do justice to the tale, but what’s not to like here for a boy on the verge of being a teenager? Jack London has many of the attributes of the classical hero: a wanderer over land and sea, a prodigious energy, love of nature, animals, consorting with interesting people, gaining fame and fortune at an early age and who, like many a hero, died at a young age- he was just forty when he breathed his last, in fulfilment of his Credo which states in part, I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot…I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. I get that.

The Irish love country music so it’s no surprise they took to Johnny Horton who recorded Honky Tonk Man in 1956 and The Battle of New Orleans in 1959. Most Irish listeners loved this song particularly because it tells of the rout of British forces by Andrew Jackson’s motley force of regular troops, militia, freed African Americans, and even pirates such as the notorious Jean Lafitte.

North to Alaska was recorded in 1960 but, tragically, Johnny Horton was killed in a car crash in November that year. In a sombre coincidence both Johnny Horton and Hank Williams gave their final performance at Austin’s Skyline Club in Texas. Also, Johnny had married Billie Jean Jones, Hank Williams’ widow, in 1953. Johnny Cash, a good friend, gave one of the readings at his funeral. Here’s my take on the song I first heard in Glenariff at age 12. [insert song]

I’ll continue my references to the frozen North with a recitation from one of Robert Service’s most popular pieces of verse- The Cremation of Sam Magee. There are strange things done in the midnight sun/By the men who moil for gold;/The Arctic trails have their secret tales/That would make your blood run cold;/The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,/But the queerest they ever did see/Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge/I cremated Sam McGee.//Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows./Why he left his home in the South to roam ’round the Pole, God only knows./He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;/Though he’d often say in his homely way that “he’d sooner live in hell.”//..And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,/And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe,/He turned to me, and “Cap,” says he, “I’ll cash in this trip, I guess;/And if I do, I’m asking that you won’t refuse my last request.”//Well, he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no; then he says with a sort of moan:/”It’s the cursèd cold, and it’s got right hold till I’m chilled clean through to the bone./Yet ’tain’t being dead—it’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;/So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last remains.”//Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;/It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the “Alice May.”/And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;/Then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry, “is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”//Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;/Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;/The flames just soared, and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see;/And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.//…And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;/And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: “Please close that door./It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear/ you’ll let in the cold and storm—/Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve been warm.”//

Thinking about Sam Magee and his need for warmth, finding it even in the midst of a furnace, reminded me of another, older story about people in a furnace miraculously preserved. This one dates back to the Hellenistic Era and the story of Daniel where Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are thrown into a furnace by Nebuchadnezzar for refusing to bow to his image. I tell the tale from the point of view of Shadrach but use his Hebrew name, Hananiah.  [insert song]

North to Alaska (words and music Mike Phillips and Tillman Franks)

Way up north, (North To Alaska.)
Way up north, (North To Alaska.)
North to Alaska,
They’re goin’ North, the rush is on.
North to Alaska,
They’re goin’ North, the rush is on.

Big Sam left Seattle in the year of ’92,
With George Pratt, his partner, and brother, Billy, too.
They crossed the Yukon River and found the bonanza gold.
Below that old white mountain just a little south-east of Nome.

Sam crossed the majestic mountains to the valleys far below.
He talked to his team of huskies as he mushed on through the snow.
With the northern lights a-running wild in the land of the midnight sun,
Yes, Sam McCord was a mighty man in the year of nineteen-one.

Where the river is winding,
Big nuggets they’re finding.
North to Alaska,
They’re goin’ North, the rush is on.

Way up north, (North To Alaska.)
Way up north, (North To Alaska.)
North to Alaska,
They’re goin’ North, the rush is on.
North to Alaska,
They’re goin’ North, the rush is on.

George turned to Sam with his gold in his hand,
Said: “Sam you’re a-lookin’ at a lonely, lonely man.
“I’d trade all the gold that’s buried in this land,
“For one small band of gold to place on sweet little Ginnie’s hand.

“‘Cos a man needs a woman to love him all the time.
“Remember, Sam, a true love is so hard to find.
“I’d build for my Ginnie, a honeymoon home.
“Below that old white mountain just a little south-east of Nome.”

Where the river is winding,
Big nuggets they’re finding.
North to Alaska,
They’re goin’ North, the rush is on.
North to Alaska,
They’re goin’ North, the rush is on.

Way up north, (North To Alaska.)
Way up north, (North To Alaska.)
Way up north, (North To Alaska.)

In the Furnace- Hananiah’s Tale (words and music Quentin Bega)

                    C                    Am                                  Dm                          G

Oh great king you changed my name, clothed me in garments strange

             C                          Am                            Dm                        G

Made me forget my mother’s tongue and habits from my home

F                                                             Em                                                       

Here I’m in your service with two friends from our old tribe

F                                                           Em                             G

Attentive to your every need and whim you may describe

        G#                      A#                  G#                         A#

You say do this and it is done- a gesture’s a command

       G#                        A#              G#                         A#     G//

There is no person higher anywhere in all this land

But oh great king I can’t bow down before you as my saviour

My comrades too will not do this though risking your disfavour

Yes I’m in your service but that’s one thing I can’t do

Throw me in the furnace and my boon companions too

You say do this and it is done- a gesture’s a command

There is no person higher anywhere in all this land

And as the flames rose higher and the walls began to glow

Joining us an angel walked around us to and fro

Above the sway of kings and queens the One reigns absolute

Before Him all the powers of this earth must stay mute

His knowledge and his wisdom and his mercy are subline

His holy kingdom will endure until the end of time

His holy kingdom will endure until the end of time

Credits: All written text, song lyrics andmusic (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone-songs Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia 2026, Weekend Supplement 14. Yesterday saw the completion of the rollout of the Letters from Quotidia interspersed with 13 Weekend Supplements which were additional original posts because I had something else to say and sing about. This 14th Supplement will continue the pattern of a cover and a new composition.

During my first year in college in third term, 1969, I bought Leonard Cohen’s Songs from a Room. I was already a fan having played through the songs on his first LP, Songs of Leonard Cohen, with muso friends over the previous two terms. We rated him as phenomenal, and I remained a fan- through to his final album release, You Want It Darker in 2016 and his posthumous, Thanks for the Dance in 2019.

Songs from a Room features the enduring classic Bird on a Wire but the song I’ll cover here is the third song of the album, A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes. Here are the words that strike a chord in me 57 years later. The heroes are, lonesome and quarrelsome, tick! Each man beneath his ordinary load, tick! I guess these heroes must always live there where you and I have only been, tick! And isn’t this the definition of Quotidia, a place where ordinary people live ordinary lives but who every now and then, encounter the extraordinary?

In the song, a young man among them repeats four times, I’d like to tell my story. A refrain I have uttered over the decades. And the kicker for me, I sing this for the crickets…and for all who do not need me!  Shall we listen to three poetic references to crickets? In his poem, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, W. B. Yeats speaks of how peace comes, dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings.

Emily Dickinson tells us, the earth has many keys,/ Where melody is not/ Is the unknown peninsula./ Beauty is nature’s fact.//But witness for her land,/ And witness for her sea / The cricket is her utmost/ Of elegy to me.//

Anne Sexton in her poem, The Twelve Dancing Princesses, asks, If you danced from midnight/ to 6 A.M. who would understand? And she answers in several stanzas, the runaway boy…the paralytic’s wife…the passengers from Boston to Paris…the amnesiac…the drunken poet…the insomniac listening to his heart…and finally… The night nurse/with her eyes slit like Venetian blinds,/she of the tubes and the plasma,/listening to the heart monitor,/the death cricket bleeping…// So, let’s listen to a tale about a bunch of lonesome and quarrelsome heroes. [insert song]

I’ll continue the theme of heroes in the second part of this post. The resourceful and wily Odysseus of Greek myth becomes the drab everyman hero Leopold Bloom in James Joyce’s modern masterpiece, Ulysses, as he wanders around Dublin over the course of one day. Cú Chulainn, hero of Irish myth, faces a dilemma that will lead to his death: he is invited by three one-eyed hags to a feast of roast dog.

Now, one of his taboos is eating dog meat but another is refusing hospitality, so he takes one bite to fulfil his obligations as a guest. As a consequence, he is weakened and receives mortal wounds when he comes up against his enemies. He ties himself to a pillar, in some accounts with his own intestines, to continue standing while fighting to the death.

So, every Father’s Day, presented with descriptors such as World’s Best Dad, men groan- perhaps inwardly- when compared, falsely in most cases I would imagine, to heroes such as the two mentioned before and to any number of masculine exemplars! There are hundreds of songs about heroes but the one that has stuck in my head for almost 50 years is Heroes by David Bowie. Something about it captured the zeitgeist of the late seventies’ for me. I find it as powerful today as when it was conceived by Bowie and Tony Visconti in the Hansa recording studio near the Berlin Wall in 1977.

Ten years before I was born, American humourist James Thurber wrote a justly famous short story about a mild-mannered, man, one Walter Mitty, who daydreams of performing heroic acts of valour while driving into town with his overbearing wife. I suspect that many mild-mannered men to this day inhabit The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.  On a trip to Canberra last September, we visited the Australian War Memorial to place a poppy beside the name of my great uncle, John Joseph Mitchell, engraved on the bronze tablets situated in the Hall of Remembrance. He was killed on the Western Front on September 18th, 1917. This is my song, Heroes. [insert song]

We also visited the National Gallery of Australia which hosted an exhibition by Berggruen/Neue Nationalgalerie of Berlin of works by Cezanne, Picasso, Klee, Braque, Matisse, and Giacometti. I, as usual when face to face with creative genius, could barely breathe. Staggered by the range of artistic brilliance on show, I moved through the exhibition in a trance for over two hours. I could have stayed two weeks and not have exhausted what was on offer- but stamina these days is rather diminished. I was particularly struck by Paul Klee’s paintings.

Towards the end of his life, he contracted the autoimmune skin disease of scleroderma and, faced with approaching death, Klee reacted in 1939 with a hitherto unparalleled increase in creative activity: he created 1253 drawings, including numerous images containing children. On his tombstone is written, I cannot be grasped in the here and now, for my dwelling place is as much among the dead as the yet unborn. You know,I think Paul Klee qualifies for the title hero.

A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes (Words and Music by Leonard Cohen)

A bunch of lonesome and very quarrelsome heroes
Were smoking out along the open road
The night was very dark and thick between them
Each man beneath his ordinary load

“I’d like to tell my story”
Said one of them so young and bold
“I’d like to tell my story
Before I turn into gold”

But no one really could hear him
The night so dark and thick and green
Well, I guess that these heroes must always live there
Where you and I have only been

Put out your cigarette, my love
You’ve been alone too long
And some of us are very hungry now
To hear what it is you’ve done that was so wrong

I sing this for the crickets
I sing this for the army
I sing this for your children
And for all who do not need me

“I’d like to tell my story,”
Said one of them so bold
“Oh, yes, I’d like to tell my story
‘Cause you know, I feel I’m turning into gold”

“Heroes” (Words and Music by Quentin Bega)

An old and rather feeble stooped man walked past

a bunch of loitering teenage boys and girls last night

They gathered round him bravely just to raise some hell

They punched and kicked him mercilessly as he fell

There on the ground they jumped upon his grey old head

Filmed the scene when whistles sounded and they fled

Posting their barbaric act to all the social sites

Shared with others of their ilk as their passage rites

Now these fleeing heroes don’t think they’re useless zeroes

That ignoring what was gory will inflate their deed to glory

Shoplifting spotless branded gear without a telling bloodstain smear

Walk past their parents’ cheerful cry of “A good night, was it, dear?

Sleep well now, you hear!”

At the memorial service a troop of comrades frail

Told of selfless sacrifices made always without fail

And as the last post sounded in the midst of all their grief

The knocking at the parents’ door was met with disbelief

That their honour student daughter and her friends the other night

Could perpetrate a crime so vile and leave a lasting blight

On all touched by their violent deed the ripples outwards spread

Affecting everyone except the old man who is dead

Now these blank-faced heroes are branded useless zeroes

And as the cases do unfold, they listen to the stories told

By victim impact statements made and how a price must now be paid

To never hear their parents’ cry, “A good night, was it, dear?

Sleep well now you hear! A good night, was it, dear? Sleep well now, you hear!-you hear…”

Credits: All written text, song lyrics andmusic (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone-songs Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia 2026, Weekend Supplement…what number to give it? It is the first for this year but the 13th since I began rolling out the Letters again- so let’s just call it number thirteen in the sequence. We have only a few weeks left in the roll out, so let’s not complicate the nomenclature further.

The Letters have undergone a number of name changes over the years that would be too tedious to enumerate. And anyway, I rather like the number 13- I am not a triskaidekaphobiac (Try saying that trippingly off the tongue with a few wines inside you!) So, a belated welcome to the new year. Do your resolutions lie around you in a broken heap? Perhaps you are a shining example of the triumph of the will? Or like me, you didn’t bother to make any at all?

Whatever the case may be- let the Letter begin! First, to dispel this tosh about 13 being unlucky. If it is it is, but mostly humanity has managed to negotiate 13 in any of its guises, iterations and manifestations with no discernible ill-effect. However, pusillanimity personified as I am, I would not choose to attend a dinner like that held in New York City in 1881 where an influential group of New Yorkers, led by US Civil War veteran Captain William Fowler, came together to put an end to this and other superstitions. They formed a dinner cabaret club, which they called the Thirteen Club. At the first meeting, on January 13 at 8:13 p.m., thirteen people sat down to dine in Room 13 of the venue. The guests walked under a ladder to enter the room and were seated among piles of spilled salt.

Ah! No more of 13- let’s talk 61- the number of years ago when the first song of this Supplement was released. It was on Bringing It All Back Home. This was Bob Dylan’s first LP release of 1965. The second of that year, Highway 61 Revisited, confirmed me as a Dylan fan, which I have remained all of my life. The song I refer to, She Belongs To Me, is a simple 12-bar blues with lyrics that captivated me then but which I had never sung until this Letter! The subject of the song is variously identified as Dylan’s girlfriend Suzi Rotolo, or Joan Baez, or Sarah Lowndes his soon-to-be wife, or Nico, among others.

There is an alternative interpretation which I incline to: the song is a hymn of thanksgiving to the Muse- the feminine principle of inspiration who is mysterious, unapproachable and who can be implacable and cruel if subjected to examination or insult. I might add that I depend utterly on the Muse to unclog the springs of my creativity so they may flow clear again! The title is misleading, – she belongs to no one, rather, we belong to her. On a personal note, I also identify her with a girl I met in Cushendall in 1965 and who is, all these years later, my wife still. [insert song]

What is it about numbers? They are the basis for that most rigorous and pure of the sciences- mathematics. At the same time, they are central to that least rational of beliefs- numerology. Children have counting games and when they grow up some of them go on to indulge in numbers, a form of gambling which flourished in America and elsewhere for many years where punters were fleeced by racketeers who made fortunes from their clients.

Then governments of all stripes began to cash in on the greedy and the gullible who see picking numbers in lotto as a short-cut to easy wealth. The fourth book of the Old Testament is called Numbers and recalls how the Israelites were counted to determine just how many able-bodied men would be available to conquer the Promised Land. The Ones and Zeros of the digital domain shape our lives in just about every way you can name- or number!

Poets, of course, use numbers in all sorts of ways but for this post I’ll confine myself to the poem Number Man by Carl Sandburg- a poet I have used in several other Letters. He addresses it (for the ghost of Johann Sebastian Bach) He was born to wonder about numbers.// He balanced fives against tens/and made them sleep together and love each other.// He took sixes and sevens/ and set them wrangling and fighting/ over raw bones.// He woke up twos and fours/ out of baby sleep/ and touched them back to sleep.// He managed eights and nines,/ gave them prophet beards,/ marched them into mists and mountains.// He added all the numbers he knew,/ multiplied them by new-found numbers/ and called it a prayer of Numbers.// For each of a million cipher silences/ he dug up a mate number/ for a candle light in the dark.// He knew love numbers, luck numbers,/ how the sea and the stars/ are made and held by numbers.// He died from the wonder of numbering./ He said good-by as if good-by is a number.//

Yet again, proof that we owe so much to our poets and our composers. Music is, indeed, mathematical. Back in the mid-1990s I wrote a song inspired by a children’s skipping rhyme called, Counting Game. It can be found on Letters From Quotidia, Episode 68. Thirty years later, here’s another song about counting- I’m Counting on You. [insert song]

What really counts? I suppose it depends on who you ask and at what stage of life they are at. A narcissist at any age will give you a different response to someone altruistic. A parent may respond differently to those without children. Culture determines to some extent a response as might the historical period. For those starving or dying of thirst, a scrap of food or drink of water may be the only thing that counts. For each individual, the only thing that matters is what counts for you!

She Belongs To Me (Words and Music Bob Dylan)

She’s got everything she needs, she’s an artist,
She don’t look back.

She’s got everything she needs, she’s an artist,
She don’t look back.
She can take the dark out of the nighttime,
And paint the daytime black.

You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees.
You will start out standing
Proud to steal her anything she sees.
But you’ll wind up peeking through her keyhole
Down upon your knees.

She never stumbles, she’s got no place to fall.
She never stumbles, she’s got no place to fall.
She’s nobody’s child, the Law can’t touch her at all.

She wears an Egyptian ring that sparkles before she speaks.
She wears an Egyptian ring that sparkles before she speaks.
She’s a hypnotist collector; you are a walking antique.

Bow down to her on Sunday,
Salute her when her birthday comes.
Bow down to her on Sunday,
Salute her when her birthday comes.
For Halloween give her a trumpet,
And for Christmas, buy her a drum.

I’m Counting on You (Words and Music by Quentin Bega)

I’m counting on you to keep me always on the track

To keep me on the straight and narrow and never to be slack

I’m counting on you that you will always have my back

When I’m assailed by enemies and under fierce attack

I’m counting on you that when I have lost the knack

Of living as I should you’ll give me everything I lack

I’m counting on you that when I’m about to crack

When I’m about to give up and fading to black

When every season is winter and the cold is pressing in

When there’s no reason to avoid all those entanglements of sin

When every path is lost and brambles tear the skin

Where nowhere offers solace or silence only din

Where all you hear is anguish and howls of suffering

Where nothing is revealed of hope and you are cowering…  Ohhh Yeah

I’m counting on you to lead me ever toward the light

Avoiding dire shadows and dangers of the night

I’m counting on you to show me only what is right

To keep that destination ever in my sight

I’m counting on you that if I am in a plight

You’ll pull me from that quicksand, and you will hold me tight

I’m counting on you that when overcome with fright

You’ll take me by the hand and clothe me in shining white

[chorus]

I’m counting on you to lift me up when e’er I fall

To be there when I need you when my back’s against the wall

I’m counting on you to be my shelter from the squall

That you will build me up whenever I am feeling small

I’m counting on you to support me in a brawl

Especially when I’m knocked down and I can barely crawl

I’m counting on you that even through the pall

That I’ll find my way back to you- I will hear you call

Credits: All written text, song lyrics and music (including background music) written and composed by Quentin Bega unless otherwise specified in the credits section after individual posts. Illustrative excerpts from other texts identified clearly within each podcast. I donate to and use Wikipedia frequently as one of the saner sources of information on the web.

Technical Stuff: Microphone-songs Shure SM58; (for the podcast spoken content) Audio Technica AT 2020 front-facing with pop filter); Apogee 76K also used for songs and spoken text. For recording and mixing down: 64-bit N-Track Studio 10 Extended used; Rubix 22 also used for mixing of microphone(s) and instruments. I use the Band in a Box/RealBand 2023 combo for music composition.