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 2024, Episode 16. This is the farewell post for 2024, and the farewell post for the Letters, posted on New Year’s Eve. As always, Quotidia is that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary.

Like the boy who cried “Wolf!” I have called it quits before, only to return with yet more dispatches from the front. And like the boy in Aesop’s fable, one of these days the wolf will really appear, devour the sheep- and the lying shepherd, too- if one credits the more extreme denouement of the tale. But until that time, let us sing and recite poetry, reminisce and raise a toast to love and light and life.

My first song, is Strange Meeting, inspired by the Wilfred Own poem which details the meeting in Hades of two opposing soldiers. The masterful handling of pararhyme creates a haunting, otherworldly soundscape as we follow one of the protagonists deep into the underworld and feel his dislocation as he comes upon one who leaps up, the man he killed, who, With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,/Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless./And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,/ By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell. “Strange friend,” I said, “here is no cause to mourn.” /“None,” said that other, “save the undone years,/The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,/Was my life also; I went hunting wild/After the wildest beauty in the world,/Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,/But mocks the steady running of the hour… In the song, I imagine meeting a future version of myself in a pub, where the steady running of the hour turns into days, weeks, years and decades. [insert song]

It is fashionable now to seek out the authentic, to live your best life, and to strive for personal fulfilment. Ah well, I suppose we are all searching for meaning in this bewildering maelstrom that is our existence. My next song explores some of this in a reflective lyric. I’ll preface it with the final stanza from the poem Islands by African American Yusef Komunyakaa dedicated to St Lucia-born poet Derek Walcott.

Islands are tricky entities no matter their size and I’ve spent years exploring the concept by writing about Aruba, Ireland and Australia. To lie down in remembrance/ is to know each of us is a prodigal/ son or daughter, looking out beyond land/ & sky, the chemical & metaphysical/ beyond falling & turning waterwheels/ in the colossal brain of damnable gods,/ a Eureka held up to the sun’s blinding eye,/ born to gaze into fire. After conquering/ frontiers, the mind comes back to rest,/ stretching out over the white sand. [insert song]

Song three is about a particular place that has had rather a bad press over the years-Belfast. In my teens I began to spend weekends in Belfast during the mid-sixties because I had met the girl of my dreams when she was visiting the Glens of Antrim village of Cushendall one summer.

My brother and his family lived in Belfast, and I relished experiencing  the vibrant music scene of the city during weekend sojourns. I followed up by applying to a college there when I was in sixth form and continued to revel in the freedom that those who have just left home for the new phase of their lives can appreciate. But this was before the troubles put paid to all that joy and freedom in 1969.

My father’s family were from Belfast, which was one of the major industrial cities of the Industrial Revolution. The Reverend W. M. O’Hanlon in a work entitled Walks Among the Poor of Belfast painted a vivid picture of the slums there in 1852, the worst of which were as bad as any in any place or age. He wrote…in truth, no pure breath of heaven ever enters here; it is tainted and loaded by the most noisome reeking feculence.

Surely, we’ve reached the bottom of the pit? But no, there is yet a lower circle in this suburb of hell, for the Reverend O’Hanlon continues, still more narrow and wretched containing, I think, nine houses, seven of which, are the abodes of guilt…here every kind of profligacy and crime is carried on…passers of base coin, thieves and prostitutes all herd together…and sounds of blasphemy, shouts of mad debauch, and cries of quarrel and blood are frequently heard here through the livelong night to the annoyance and terror of the neighbourhood…it is the practice of these miscreants to frequent the docks, and, having caught sailors, like unwary birds, in their toils, to allure them into their pitfalls, where they are soon peeled and plundered. But this was the city which I came to love a little over one hundred years later. The song, Belfast Calling, supplies the reasons for this affection. [insert song]

I was a bit like the Lydian king, Croesus, until I was well into my thirties. Not that I was wealthy or powerful, very far from it, then or now, but I was happy, moderately successful in my career, and considered myself bullet-proof. The Athenian lawmaker, Solon, who was visiting Lydia, warned King Croesus, who considered himself the happiest man alive, not to consider himself happy until the end of his life because fortune is fickle, and circumstances can change in an instant. It was not until Croesus had lost his kingdom to Cyrus, the Persian king, and was awaiting execution, that he realised the wisdom of Solon’s advice.

Thirty-five years ago, my first-born son, Brian, was killed in a motorbike accident two months before his sixteenth birthday, and it altered the trajectory of my life and the lives of my family, too. My song, Come Back an Angel, is one of several I have written over the years in response. [insert song]

The penultimate song differs in a couple of ways from the others presented in this post: first, it is recorded live- just one mic on a laptop placed on a table with the group Banter arranged around it; and second, it is the only song where I have not written the music and words. Fifty years ago, I remember struggling to get a chord arrangement going that I was happy with because I was debuting the song with the group I had helped form in Wollongong, NSW- Seannachie.

Fast forward twenty years and I twinned the stirring march tune, The Battle of Aughrim with it for performance with the group Banter in western Sydney. The song in question is a traditional folk song, originally a Scottish border ballad, and popular throughout the English-speaking world. It concerns an elopement where a lady of high distinction runs off with a band of gypsies. So, here now is The Raggle-Taggle Gypsy/The Battle of Aughrim. [insert song]

The final song in this NYE selection is also somewhat different insofar as this song has a jazzy tinge. I wrote it as I was approaching retirement and feeling increasingly out of place- a bit of a fossil, to be frank. I had attended a concert at The Henry Lawson Club in western Sydney in 1996 where a group of English comedians were featured and when I was writing the song a few years later, I remembered the smoke-filled room, risqué jokes that would have the easily offended easily offended and I knew that this was the ending of an era: that the smoke haze from cigars and cigarettes, the frankly sexist jokes and rough camaraderie of working people enjoying themselves would be increasingly challenged by a different dispensation in the 21st C. So here is Foss Hill (The Old Comedian) [insert song]

I wrote this verse long, long ago- Explication: Like a poem carved upon an ancient bone/Dug out of an ash-pit;/Like an outline of a heart in bog-oak/Dragged up and in to the open air;/Like the remnants of an ancient tune/Whistling through the shaking leaves/Of the last stand of native trees/Left on a fissured plain:/Let my voice, telling of love/And letdowns, carry across/ The fields of time spread/To the shimmering edges/Of eternity fringed with/A sparkling circlet of stars/Before they wink out/One by one,/Swallowed by the incurious/Blankness beyond.”

For NYE 2024, though, I’ll have to leave you with something more hopeful- this from Psalm 18, may serve: You Lord, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light. Thank you for your company in these Letters, even if it was for only part of the way. My sign off is not the usual sting but the short Coda, the nearest to a psalm or a hymn I can do- and I wrote it 40 years ago HNY [insert song]

Strange Meeting (music and lyrics by Quentin Bega)

I walked into a strange lounge bar and order a whiskey sour

Found a booth to read a brand-new paper book to pass an hour

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Hunter Thompson’s opus read

A grey-haired guy sat down beside me and without an invite said

That he could explicate Like a Rolling Stone

But he goes to bed most nights of late- alone

We sparred as strangers often do searching for the common ground

He read the title of my book and felt his opening gambit sound

He looked as though an offered drink would not be rejected out of hand

He asked for and got a double gin and told me of his favourite bands

Oh he could explicate Like a Rolling Stone

But he goes to bed most nights of late-alone

Amused I listened to him ramble ordered up another drink

Although he sang the blues his politics, well they’d be a shade of pink

He said he’d seen most continents I said you must’ve got around

I lost count of the gins and whiskeys that afternoon that we poured down

He could explicate Like a Rolling Stone

But he goes to bed most nights of late-alone

He told me life was just a gas but sad eyes told another tale

We both half-smile at the white lie agreeing to meet without fail

I arose to go saw his reflection staring from the mirror-clock

It’s almost forty years since in that mirror our eyes met and locked

Now I can explicate Like a Rolling Stone

But I go to bed most nights of late-alone

I can explicate Like a Rolling Stone

But I go to bed most nights of late-alone

Sing Along  (Words and music Quentin Bega) 

 If you want to go across the sea to Ireland 

If you want to kiss the Blarney Stone In May 

If you want to plant a shamrock in your garland 

If you want to find the fairy folk today 

Come away dream away 

Irish dancing at the Feis is in my mind now 

As your father played his fiddle in the glen 

And you danced upon the platform light and easy 

And the evening sky was glowing after ten 

Once again once again 

But those summer nights are lost to view forever 

Now project houses fill the fields of yore 

And the young folk surf the Web and they have never 

Seen the light shine as it did before 

Nevermore nevermore 

I went searching in the Irish pubs of Sydney 

For an echo of the place where I was born

But it wasn’t there I found it in my backyard 

Among those friends who’ll join me in a song 

Sing along sing along 

          (Repeat verse One) 

Belfast Calling (words and music Quentin Bega)

Belfast Calling me after all these years

I’m not surprised because my life was shaped by Belfast town

No titles bring I’m not bred from kings

But chimneysweeps and sailors neat who lived in Belfast town

Those days are gone forever there is nowhere better

Than the place I know when in dreams I go to Belfast town

I met the sweetest girl she turned my world

Inside out and upside down in Belfast town

By Belfast Lough the city docks to her I came

She took my name in Belfast town

Those days are gone forever there is nowhere better

Than the place I know when in dreams I go to Belfast town

Our daughter born the city torn

By civil strife we had no life in Belfast town

Out here in New South Wales the scattered Gaels

Remember home we’re not alone though far from Belfast town

Those days are gone forever there is nowhere better

Than the place I know when in dreams I go to Belfast town

Belfast Calling me after all these years

I’m not surprised because my life was shaped by Belfast town

I’m not surprised because my life was shaped by Belfast town

Come Back an Angel (words and music by Quentin Bega)

You’ve been gone ages the years have rolled by

Mountains stand the sea is not dry still I cry

My friends and family this daily round helped me find something

But you were not found

Come back an angel could you please

Come back an angel if only in my dreams

You’ve been gone so long

Come back an angel to me

Well I tried religion got down on my knees

The saints and the Virgin I appealed to these I appealed to these

Now if I could carve your name in the sun blazing brightly

This done what would I have won

So come back an angel could you please

Come back an angel if only in my dreams

You’ve been gone so long

Come back an angel to me

Come back an angel could you please

Come back an angel if only in my dreams

You’ve been gone so long

Come back an angel come back an angel come back an angel

The Raggle Taggle Gypsy/ Battle of Aughrim (trad)

There were three yellow gipsies came to our hall door,
And downstairs ran this lady, O!
One sang high and another sang low
And the other sang bonny, bonny Biscay, O!

Then she pull’d off her silk finish’d gown
And put on hose of leather, O!
The ragged, ragged rags all about our door
She’s away with the raggle taggle gipsies, O!

It was late that night, when my lord came home,
Enquiring for his a-lady, O!
The servants said, on ev’ry hand:
She’s away with the raggle taggle gipsies, O!

O, saddle to me my milk-white steed,
And go fetch me my pony, O!
That I may ride to seek my bride,
Who is gone with the raggle taggle gipsies, O!

O he rode high and he rode low,
He rode through woods and copses too,
Until he came to a wide open field,
And there he espied his a-lady, O!

What made you leave your house and land?
What made you leave your money, O?
What made you leave your newly wedded lord,
For to go with the raggle taggle gipsies, O?

What care I for my house and my land?
What care I for money, O?
What care I for my newly wedded lord?
I’m off with the raggle taggle gipsies, O!

Last night you slept on a goose-feather bed,
With the sheet turned down so bravely, O!
And tonight you’ll sleep in a cold open field,
Along with the raggle taggle gipsies, O!

What care I for a goose-feather bed,
With the sheet turned down so bravely, O?
I’d rather have a kiss from the yellow gypsy’s lips,
Than all your houses or your land or your money-O!

The Battle of Aughrim:  a)        Dm C Dm C Am Dm-2

                                                 b) Dm C Am Dm C Am Dm- 2   Repeat a) and b)

Foss Hill (The Old Comedian) words and lyrics by Quentin Bega

I’m leaving no sense in grieving but lately I feel out of place

I’ve noticed when I tell a joke that audiences sit stony-faced

They used to laugh about my bare-foot pregnant dishwashing wife

Now you can cut their silence with a knife

When I started I was light-hearted as I took my show on the road

Did stand-up from Darwin to Hobart searching for the mother lode

But I could never find it low bars cruise ships private functions

I have told jokes in the strangest places

I did TV had my own series if one-year amounts to that name

Then the axe fell it was all over a comic has no one to blame

I watched as younger faces mugged it up as tabloids raged

That my routine was sexist and depraved

(instrumental break)

I’m leaving no sense in grieving but lately I feel out of place

I’ve noticed when I tell a joke that audiences sit stony-faced

They used to laugh about my bare-foot pregnant dishwashing wife

Now you can cut their silence with a knife

So you better believe I’m leaving

Coda (words and music by Quentin Bega)

Something came into my cell today

Feels like the wind

The wind that blows through solid walls

And confining doors

Something touched my wound and made it well

Feels like the hand

The hand that leads the dispossessed

To the promised land

And I don’t want to feel the pain

To grieve in the dark again

If you go away please

Take me with you

(instrumental verse)

And I don’t want to feel the pain

To wake to the dark again

If you go away please

Take me with you

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.

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia 2024 Episode 15. Quotidia, is that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary. The first song in this month’s offering is Bunclody. It’s redolent of themes that have exercised me over the course of the Letters and, indeed, life. Nature, Romantic love, Home, Emigration, Lack of money and land, Missing and Farewelling friends and relations and, of course, the refuge offered by Alcohol.

Luke Kelly of The Dubliners, whose version of the song stands supreme, relates how the group were in Bunclody and singing in a pub at lunchtime- not as a concert but just as something the Irish do as a matter of course- he relates how a local schoolmaster, Michael Flannery, asked if he could sing a song as well. And, in a soft voice, Bunclody emerged. And it is this soft voice I will try and emulate as opposed to the stentorian masterpiece that Luke produced.

The song opens with the evocation of the moss-house where the birds do increase. A moss house is a dwelling covered in moss usually in rural settings. William Cowper, the 18th Century English poet, in a poem entitled, Inscription For A Moss-House In The Shrubbery At Weston writes, Here, free from riot’s hated noise,/Be mine, ye calmer, purer joys,/A book or friend bestows;/Far from the storms that shake the great,/ Contentment’s gale shall fan my seat,/And sweeten my repose.// He is perhaps best known for the lines, God moves in a mysterious way/His wonders to-perform;/He-plants-His-footsteps-in-the-sea/And rides upon the storm.// [insert song]

I gave my Bing Co-pilot the opportunity to finish the thought, the myths of every culture are amazing repositories of…and almost immediately it came back with, the myths of every culture are amazing repositories of ancient wisdom and timeless tales that reflect the collective experiences and values of a civilization. They offer a unique window into the beliefs, hopes, fears, and moral codes that have shaped societies throughout history. Myths serve as a bridge connecting the past to the present, allowing us to understand the human journey through stories of heroes, gods, and monsters that embody the universal struggles and triumphs of the human spirit.

This is seriously good stuff and yet I felt deflated. Yes, of course, you may say, it is only a tool, like all the others we use to make our lives more productive and comfortable. When I started to experiment with AI as an aid only a matter of eighteen months ago, I was able to be rather dismissive at its infelicities of expression, redundancies and comical attempts at verse, etc. But like any good slave it is learning apace, and it won’t be too long before it becomes the master, I fear. Hence my low spirits at not being able to mark it down.

How long before I don’t bother any more to search out the right response, correct syntax and fabrication of other resources of language writers are proud of discovering by dint of personal effort? How long before I simply and lazily issue prompts and instruct it to speak in my voice as well as composing lyrics and music in my style? Will I emerge like one of those multiple composers of songs currently in the charts where the crafting of a phrase or a title merits equal billing?

Would I insist on being first on the bill-Quentin Bega/AI in a pathetic attempt to wrest some dignity from the fraudulent process? Answer, No! Like Candide at the end of his adventures, I will, instead, go and find honest toil in the garden. But while there is still a point to all this, here’s my original song, Shall I Set Your Precious Honour Under Siege?  which takes its theme and acronymic title from a Greek myth where the protagonist defies men and gods only to find eternal punishment.

I find myself identifying with the mythical performer of the endlessly futile task- and all the more strongly now as I reflect on the future of my endeavours in the creative fields of writing scripts and crafting songs. Last month, I quoted Dr Seuss, how did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June… How did it get so late so soon? Still applies, folks!  [insert song]   

In my introduction to the podcasts in January 2021, I wrote that 30 weeks were to be taken up in the venture. However, as it transpired, The Letters from Quotidia continued under a variety of names until this month, December 2024. By now, they have generated several hundreds of songs, several hundreds of thousands of words and 80+ hours of podcast time and so this seems a nice round number to put the podcasts to bed for a long, perhaps terminal, rest.

Veteran listeners to the podcasts may say, wearily, we’ve heard all this before. To which I can only reply, each time I said it was over, I meant it, but then changed my mind.! Whether this is a terminus or just a brief hiatus- only time will tell. My determination is that the New Year’s Eve post will be, umm, The Last Post I was going to say, but I’ll cancel that thought and substitute the less fate-tempting, final podcast of the series.

With all the doom and gloom around you might think that the prophet, Jeremiah, would have a suitably glum take on events, but the best prophets have the capacity to surprise us! “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” In eight days’ time, it will be New Year’s Eve and I will select a few songs to bid farewell to the series that grew apace. Until then, take care!

Budclody (traditional Irish: origin 19th Century)

Oh were I at the moss house where the birds do increase

At the foot of Mount Leinster or some silent  place

By the streams of Bunclody where all pleasures do meet

And all I would ask is one kiss from you sweet

Were I in Bunclody I would think myself at home
‘Tis there I’d have a sweetheart, but here I have none
Drinking strong liquor in the height of my cheer
Here’s health to Bunclody and the lass I love dear

The cuckoo is a pretty bird, it sings as it flies
It brings us good tidings and tells us no lies
It sucks young bird’s eggs to make its voice clear
And the more it cries cuckoo the summer draws near

If I were a clerk and could write a good hand
I would write to my true love that she might understand
I am a young fellow that is wounded in love
That lived by Bunclody but now must remove

If I were a lark and had wings and could fly
I would go to yon arbour where my love she does lie
I’d proceed to yon arbour where my true love does lie
And on her fond bosom content I would die

‘Tis why my love slights me as you may understand
That she has a freehold and I have no land
She has great store of riches and a large sum of gold
And everything fitting a house to uphold

So adieu my dear father, my dear mother adieu
Farewell to my sister, farewell my brother too
I am bound to America my fortune to try
When I think on Bunclody I’m ready to die

Shall I Set Your Precious Honour Under Siege? 

(Words and Music by Quentin Bega)                                                               

I don’t know when I began to roll this heavy stone up this endless hill

I don’t care how long it takes all I know is that rolling it I will

If you won’t help me I don’t expect you want to anyway

In fact I think that all you’d do would get yourself in my way

So there ain’t too much left for me to say

I once had a family, mother father sons and good wife who

Applauded as I fooled the world outwitting men and the almighty too

I even cheated death causing chaos as zombies roamed the earth

I plundered, raped and killed and I was brimming with a gleeful mirth

As every single person cursed my birth

Don’t you believe me can’t you get your head around my tale

My fate’s the dictionary definition of an epic fail

The details are bound to make you quail

I don’t know when I began to roll this heavy stone up this endless hill

I don’t care how long it takes all I know is that rolling it I will

If you won’t help me I don’t expect you want to anyway

In fact I think that all you’d do would get yourself in my way

So there ain’t too much left for me to say

Don’t you believe me can’t you get your head around my tale

My fate’s the dictionary definition of an epic fail

The details are bound to make you quail

[The acronymic title answers the question, Who am I?]

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.

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia 2024, Episode 14. Quotidia, is that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary. I love poetry for the exotic imagery only verse can supply. Romeo Oriogun, who works at the University of Iowa, provides a snapshot of a scene from a roadside bar in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso where he talks to an old man…

I didn’t know this man,/this bard from an old and distant city,/whose forehead was wrinkled like a couple/ of rolled up maps. Outside the open windows,/ women kept walking back and forth./ Pimps stood in dark corners, lighted by streetlamps./ A man in a dark coat jumped across a puddle of water,/ and on the other side, the black earth moved/ into the newness of things as a jazz band/ pierced the air, mimicking through music/ the movement of God, the elegy we all belong to…

Isn’t that a wonderful evocation. The often-fatuous travel shows which populate various media can’t offer anything close, IMHO! As the Letters from Quotidia near their end, I feel the weariness that November frequently laid on me when I lived in the dark and drizzle of that penultimate month in Northern Ireland.

As a teenager, I concentrated on the Irish folk tradition using the Clancy Brothers Songbook as my excavating tool, but I also had affection for the English folk scene burgeoning across the Irish Sea. Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span and Pentangle were making a name for themselves and, in particular, I was captivated by the singing of Sandy Denny, Maddy Prior with Fairport Convention and Jacqui McShee with Pentangle.

So, when I was looking for a November song, who should I come across but Sandy Denny on the piano singing Late November– a tour-de-force that I will not attempt to emulate here but merely pay homage with the folk-rock arrangement that follows. The imagery of Late November brings back the dark romanticism of the 70s that I drew upon to write several of my  own lyrics at the time. Her tragic death in 1978 at age 31, following on from a fall down a staircase, robbed the world of a fabulous singer. Would she were still singing, as is the case with Jacqui McShee and Maddy Prior. Late November: [insert song ]

Hamlet examines what it is that we deserve. In Act 2 scene 2, Prince Hamlet feigns madness as a protective measure. His uncle Claudius, who has usurped the throne by murdering Hamlet’s father to marry his mother, has sent for a couple of Hamlet’s friends to spy on him. Hamlet, sensing treachery everywhere among the courtiers, escapes into flights of exquisite poetry such as the world has rarely seen before and rarely since, if you were inclined to ask my opinion.

 I could be bounded in a nutshell and/count myself a king of infinite space, /were it Not that-I -have-bad dreams./Earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most/ excellent canopy, the air,  look-you,-this-brave-o’erhanging/ firmament,   this majestical roof, fretted/with golden fire why,-it-appeareth-nothing-to-me/-but-a-foul-and-pestilent-congregation-of-vapours./What-a-piece-of-work-is-a-man,-how-noble-in/reason,-how-infinite-in-faculties,-in-form-and-moving/how-express-and-admirable;-in-action-how-like/an-angel,-in-apprehension-how-like-a-god:-the/beauty-of-the-world,-the-paragon-of-animals-and/yet,-to-me,-what-is-this-quintessence-of-dust?// 

A group of travelling actors visit the castle and Polonius, the chief counsellor for Claudius, is rather dismissive of their theatrical chops but Hamlet, speaking Shakespeare’s thoughts too, tells him: …will you see the players well disposed? Do you hear? Let them be well used, for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the time. After your death you were better have a bad epitaph than their ill report while you live.

The supercilious Polonius replies: My Lord, I will use them according to their desert. Hamlet’s response is scathing, God’s body, man! Much better. Use every man after his desert and who shall ‘scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity. The less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty. Take them in.

It is a gracious and generous thought that finds echoes in scripture: In James, chapter 2 verse 13 we read, For judgement will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy, mercy triumphs over judgement. The book of Micah, from the Old Testament which was composed about eight centuries before James states in chapter 6 verse 8, He has told you, O man, what is good: and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.

So, what do we deserve? And will we find our judge to be someone like Polonius or someone like Hamlet? Such thoughts only task believers, for atheists believe that there is no postmortem blowback. So, I admire them for, by and large, leading exemplary lives regardless! I explore such thoughts in my song, All That I Deserve [insert song]

Next month, when the raven comes a-knocking, will you, like Edgar Allan Poe, say: Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor? Or has The Simpsons’ gloriously humorous interpretation of his famous poem rendered its eeriness moot? So much so that Dr Seuss seems profound in comparison: How did it get so late so soon? It’s night before it’s afternoon. December is here before it’s June. My goodness how the year has flewn. How did it get so late so soon? How indeed.

Late November (words and music by Sandy Denny)

The wine it was drunk, the ship it was sunk,
The shot it was dead, all the sorrows were drowned.
The birds they were clouds, the brides and the shrouds
And as we drew south the mist it came down.

The wooded ravine to the wandering stream,
The serpent he moved, but no-one would say.
The depths of the waters, the bridge which distraught us
And brought to me thoughts of the ill-fated day.

The temples were filled with the strangest of creatures
One played it by ear on the banks of the sea.
That one was found but the others they went under.
Oh the tears which are shed, they won’t come from me.

The methods of madness, the pathos and the sadness,
God help you all, the insane and wise.
The black and the white, the darkness of the night,
I see only smoke from the chimneys arise.

The pilot he flew all across the sky and woke me.
He flew solo on the mercury sea.

The dream it came back, all about the tall brown people,
The sacred young herd on the phosphorus sand.

All That I Deserve (words and music by Quentin Bega)

Today as I am walking towards that blazing setting sun

I ask myself the question: Oh Lord, what do I deserve?

Is it condemnation or is there a pardon on the cards?

Will I sink in the lake of fire or find a hand stretched from above

That which I have often done and more often failed to do

Hurtful words I have spoken better words withheld from fear

Silence is not golden but makes those bullets fly

And it’s true that conscience doth make cowards of us all

Oh I have sought redemption in my woman’s loving arms

And if this isn’t heaven I don’t know where it may be found

Now touching the horizon and still the light flares out

Incarnadining the ocean track as we await the dark

Not much left that needs to be expressed this eventide

As the darkness falls around us like an inky cloak

We are dreamers made of dust enlivened by a spark

We are creatures made of clay who wonder at the sky

We fell out of Eden though yearning to get back

Searching for a paradise that might be out of reach

Oh I have sought redemption in my woman’s loving arms

And if this isn’t heaven I don’t know where it may be found

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.

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia 2024, Episode 13. Quotidia, is that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary. This is an extra post for this month, the reason: it is the 11th of November, Remembrance Day throughout the Commonwealth and Veterans Day in the US where the sacrifice of those who served in the armed forces in wartime and lost their lives are commemorated.

Back in 1979, I wrote a song about Major Claude Eatherly, one of the pilots of the Hiroshima bombing raid of August 6, 1945. He piloted the Straight Flush, a weather reconnaissance aircraft and radioed the Enola Gay, the plane which carried the atomic bomb, Little Boy, that the weather was perfect for the strike on the unsuspecting city. My first reading about his life left me with the opinion that he was a hero. Later, 

I read material that painted him as a derelict husband and father, a crook and opportunist willing, for example, to bomb Havana, Cuba, for $100,000. To this day I remain torn between these readings. So, what to do? I’ll play you the song and leave you to decide whether Major Claude Eatherly is worthy of this attention: its title is,237 Dollars, the amount of his monthly government pension. [insert song]

The Korean War, fought between 1950 and 1953, is still in progress although stalled, however tenuously, by the ceasefire signed on 27th July 1953. For many, it is a forgotten war, even though five million people, mostly civilians- as usual- lost their lives. There aren’t many songs or poems about it in the public memory. I found a 1951 song, The Unknown Soldier, recorded as the B-side of an RCA Victor single, by singer-songwriter Elton Britt. The soldier wonders whether he has died in vain. Its genre is early 1950s country music and I cover it here as an artifact from the forgotten war that may reignite into a global conflagration at any time. [insert song]  

The next two songs have a personal connection. Rose is a song about my paternal grandmother I wrote in 1997. I first knew her as a photograph of an elegant Edwardian lady in an oval frame hanging in the reception room of my childhood home in Cushendall, Northern Ireland. My enquiries were deflected, brushed off with the bare bones info that this was my father’s mother but not the one who raised him.

My nephew, Joe Mitchell, did a little delving into family history and found that my grandmother had taken a trip to Germany on a ship captained by her husband in 1914 and that both had been interned because war had just broken out. She was returned to Ireland without her husband and, driven out of her mind with worry, was confined to an insane asylum where she died before the end of the war. [insert song]

Next, is a song about my great-uncle John Joseph Mitchell who was a killed in World War I. After collating what meagre information I had gathered, I thought: Why not have the persona of my great uncle  narrate a portion of his life, from a brief mention of his birth in Belfast, to his meeting with his wife, Hannah, in Liverpool in1903 to their life together in Melbourne to his enlistment in the A.I.F. to his death next to a German blockhouse near Hell Fire Corner and Polygon Wood in Belgium in 1917, which was commemorated by a Requiem Mass I viewed from Australia over the internet in 2017 on the centenary of his death?

He was one of over 62,000 diggers killed in that awful conflict. And those numbers from an Australian population of less than five million people! Is it any wonder that there are memorials in just about every Aussie city, suburb, town and hamlet to mark the sacrifice? His name is engraved on bronze tablets at the Australian War Memorial, and I visit it to place a poppy next to his name every time we are in Canberra [insert song]

The final song to mark this day is Progress. I got the idea from a cartoon Ron Cobb published in the 1960s: The upper panel shows two cavemen brandishing bones at one another. Then, dividing the upper panel from the lower panel, is the word Progress. The lower panel shows two men in suits; one has a pistol with which he has just shot his rival dead. This song, then, inserts a few more panels outlining the history of war. From prehistoric wooden spears to deadly longbow arrows that decimated the French cavalry at the battle of Agincourt, to bullets at the battle of Gettysburg, to artillery shells at the battle of the Somme, and finally, to nuclear weapons. In an age of Artificial Intelligence, where there are swarms of aerial drones, robot soldiers mooted and a legion of ingenious killing mechanisms that are being devised by our devilishly clever species, what’s it to be? Or not to be? [insert song]

Confucius has this to say, the end of the day is near when small men make long shadows. God knows, there are plenty of small men (and women too- though fewer) who are posturing, gesticulating and bloviating grandiloquently and throwing long shadows as they urge us all towards that grotesque precipice over which there will be no return.

The regular November post drops in just shy of two weeks’ time. So, let’s hope that Armageddon is always scheduled for mañana. As Anonymous puts it, dispelling the gloom of this post, let this be the November you always remember. The November you chose to believe there was more to your future than you were able to see. Two posts remain this year: December’s Letter and the NYE finale.

237 Dollars (words and music by Quentin Bega)

Claude took a flight: it ended in madness

The government said: pay compensation

Our actuaries solve these problems every day

He’ll get what’s coming in good measure

He didn’t want to take the money although

237 dollars a month is a good rate for the soul they say

237 dollars a month is a good rate for the soul today

Sunrise in Japan: it’s an emblem

What better place or time to make it happen

We’ll cow Uncle Joe and make the Japs surrender

Go now Claude collect a government pension

(Chorus)

Main Street USA: no pity

Even heroes have to give their dimes here

Crimes against property are not forgiven

Put Claude in Fort Worth where no one sees him

(Chorus)

Claude cries at night: screams “Release it!”

Hell fire scorches earth: he is a pilot

The flames burn in his head everlastingly

This song is for you Major Eatherly

(Chorus)

The Unknown Soldier (John Schram and Charles Grean)

I am the chill of a winter frost,
The night that surrounds a hill
I am the shadow, the sunlight lost
A voice that will never be still
My grave is a promise you did not keep
My wreath is a ribbon of pain
and though I am dead, I shall never sleep
If I know I have died in vain

( four bar instrumental break)

I am the branch of a fallen tree
The death of a lonely sky
I am the sound of a waveless sea
Where the ships of life pass me by
I am a hero without a name
I died for my fellow man
Unknown I’ll remain
In God’s hall of fame
‘Til there’s peace in the world again
‘Til there’s peace in the world again

Rose (words and music by Quentin Bega)

Your name was rarely mentioned Rose when I was growing up

A closed book on a high shelf unopened and uncut

A picture in an oval frame that’s staring into space

Waiting for a mention and waiting for a place

Inside our family history then just the other day

A letter from my nephew came and swept some dark away

Telling of internment in that war to end all wars

And your return to Ireland with anguished mental scars

Rose runs in her asylum clothes

Fleeing from her demons down a darkened Antrim Road

She’s running towards her husband in that distant German camp

Crying to the stars what’s happened to her man oh Rose oh Rose

In ‘14 you were happy gave domestic life the slip

Sailing with your husband as he captained his fine ship

To the port of Hamburg oh did you find release

Did you find what you were after and did you find some peace

Why did you take that fateful trip into the jaws of war

Why did you leave those young boys behind on Ireland’s shore

The answers all are buried now and sunk into the clay

Or hidden is a dusty file that’s yet to see the day

Chorus

Forgive me Rose if I have used your pain to write this song

People I respect tell me they wonder if I’m wrong

To use you to fill a drunken room with feeble sound

Have I desecrated what was once your holy ground

But Rose I am your grandson and surely I should know

The people I have come from so that I might show

My children that there is a point no matter what the cost

Nothing that’s remembered is ever really lost

Chorus

(I Wasn’t with the Diggers) Marching Home from That War…

                 Words and music Quentin Bega

They gave me a number 5141, on my slouch hat pinned the rising sun.

From Port Melbourne to Plymouth Sound with the 22nd we were Europe bound

Belfast born but I didn’t stay long these itchy feet keep moving me along

In Liverpool I met fiery Hannah

-fell for her although she had a child

Hitched up after I agreed to take the soup we set up shop in Melbourne town

She’s a nurse I’m an engine-fitter there is nothing here that will ever get me down

But four kids on completely worn through life has given this for free

22 Church Street feels like a coffin A.I.F. enlistment now for me

Billeted in Rolleston camp in Wiltshire bleak and under canvas what care I

Went walkabout against the regs as Aussies often do six days docked I paid all told

Bedridden for two weeks with rheumatism isn’t it a bugger getting old

Off to France tomorrow will I return upon another tide

I don’t take it well when told what I should do a problem I have had all my life

It’s why I call myself a digger now instead of bullshit we would rather fight

A good bloke would write on my conduct sheet “this man served at Bullecourt!”

That’s a boast it’s true but what came next was the hell you know as Passchendaele

It ended thus a midnight blitz on a German blockhouse then the fatal shell

Hannah got her dead man’s penny and the scapulars that hung around my neck

Now with my pals Twist, Coode, Kelly, Carey, Bragg, Baker, Kennedy, Northcott and Ray

Side by side in Hooge Crater Cemetery as we await the Judgement Day

Old Father White said a Requiem for me 100 years after I was killed

The chapel in Glenariffe overlooks the beach where I paddled when I was a boy

Place a poppy by my name on the bronze tablets they set up in Canberra for all

Those for any reason who served who fought who sacrificed and fell

And I’m still marching through your mind as you try to work out just who I am

There’s nothing I can share that will help you write this song

But one thing I can tell you that is true-

I wasn’t with the diggers marching home from that war

Progress (Words and music Quentin Bega)

You saw a valley bright

You fashioned wooden spears

And you were killed that very night

Your spirit walks down the years

And don’t be sad you have your place

You are the progress of this human race

You rode at Agincourt

You wore a metal coat

You fought in the King’s just war

And died with an arrow stuck in your throat

But don’t be sad you have your place

You are the progress of this human race

You fell at Gettysburg

You didn’t get to hear Abe’s great address

You fought to free the slaves

And left your family in a mess

Don’t be sad you have your place

You are the progress of this human race

You marching to the Somme

You with your tin hat on

You caught a mortar bomb

You with no head left on

But don’t be sad you have your place

You are the progress of this human race

You work at Los Alamos

You fought with physics lore

You showed that Jap emperor just who was boss

Our children will perish in the next world war

And now be sad there is no place

You will destroy this human race

Now be sad there is no place

You have destroyed the human race

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.

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia, 2024 Episode 12, the October edition. Quotidia, is that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary.

One of the sites I visit regularly is Poem a Day. It has supplied several examples of verse that have appeared in the Letters over the past four years. Recently I came across Midmorning (Vormittag in the original German) by Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger translated from the German by Carlie Hoffman. Eisinger was a Jewish, German-language poet from Bukovina. Born on February 5, 1924, in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, she was a Jewish poet and translator.

On December 16, 1942, at the age of eighteen, she died of typhus while incarcerated in a Nazi SS forced-labour camp. Before her deportation, Meerbaum-Eisinger gave her poetry manuscript to a close friend, in hopes that it would be safe. The handbound, handwritten manuscript contains fifty-seven poems, fifty-two originals, and five poems that she translated from other languages. Midmorning was written on January 8, 1941, nine months before her family’s forced relocation.

According to translator Carlie Hoffman, the fact that the manuscript survived is astonishing, as there were several close calls wherein-Blütenlese-would-have-been-lost-forever. The younger cousin of Paul Celan, her poem, Midmorning, speaks of the passions contained in the teenage heart and it reminds me of another precocious talent of that time who also perished from typhus in a Nazi death camp- Anne Frank. Here is Midmorning: Wind, dreamy notes, sings/its lullaby, gently touching the leaves./I let myself be, seduced, immersed/in song like grass.//Air shivers/and cools my fevered face/wrapped in desire./Clouds drift by, scatter white,/sun-stolen light.//The old acacia/leaves silence/a trembling tangle of leaves./The scents of the earth rise, climb/and then fall back to me.//

One of countless lives sacrificed on the obscene altar of sectarian hatred, it is to humanity’s enduring shame that the obscene altar continues to extinguish so many lives as I speak. Selma’s famous cousin, Paul Celan, survived the Holocaust and his great poem Todesfuge– The Fugue of Death I have spoken about in one of my earlier Letters from Quotidia– episode 44 published on 25th March 2021. I first read this poem as a 23-year-old teacher, and it has stayed with me as one of my literary touchstones. It was the inspiration for a song, Paul, which I wrote at age 29 commemorating his life and death by drowning in the River Seine. I recorded the song, during long service leave in 2000. I reprise it here. [insert song]

Time for an October poem and an October song. Dylan Thomas was born on the 27th of October 1914. He was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems Do not go gentle into that good night and And death shall have no dominion, He became widely popular in his lifetime; and remained so after his death at the age of 39 in New York City. By then, he had acquired a reputation, which he had encouraged, as a roistering, drunken and doomed poet. Doomed or not, he wrote some of the more memorable poetry of the 20th Century. As a fellow Celt, I feel an affinity to his work. Here are a few lines from Poem in October,

It was my thirtieth year to heaven/Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood/ And the mussel pooled and the heron/Priested shore…/ My birthday began with the water-/Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name/Above the farms and the white horses/And I rose/In rainy autumn/And walked abroad in a shower of all my days…/all the gardens/Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales/Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud…/ And I saw in the turning so clearly a child’s/Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother/Through the parables/Of sun light/And the legends of the green chapels/And the twice told fields of infancy/That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine./ And there could I marvel my birthday/Away…/It was my thirtieth/ Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon/Though the town below lay leaved with October blood./O may my heart’s truth/Still be sung/On this high hill in a year’s turning.//

The Clancy Brothers Songbook was my first primer when I was learning the guitar in my mid-teens. One of my favourite songs from this source was The Castle of Dromore. From the site irishpage.com I learned the following, The words of the song were written by Sir Harold Boulton to a traditional tune, My Wife is Sick, lulling a child to sleep with a prayer for safety against the wild weather and “Clan Eoin’s wild Banshee.” There are at least four castles named Castle of Dromore or Dromore Castle in the counties Down, Kerry, Limerick and Tyrone. Without solid proof Dromore Castle, in County Tyrone is taking the lead. Clan Owen in the second verse once possessed the counties Tyrone and Derry and parts of County Donegal. The banshee in verse two points towards a fairy-like woman originating from or serving Clan Owen (perhaps as some sort of clan ghost). Well, October is the spooky month as the first line of the song intimates- [insert song]

November beckons, so remember, for many of you residing in the Northern Hemisphere if there’s ice in November that will bear a duck, there’ll be nothing after but sludge and muck. Nice here in Quotidia, though, as summer cometh in!

                                   Paul (lyrics and music by Quentin Bega)

The forest gave to you a necklace of hands

The aspen tree reminds you of your mother’s hair

Now you are young as a bird dropped dead in March snow

Your poetry sings out like a phoenix from the flare

And I want to know if I can save my soul

Or if I’m losing losing all control

Losing losing all control

Losing losing all control

You drank the black milk and tasted ashes on your tongue

You played with serpents and you heard the fugue of death

You said the night needs no stars mouths full of silence

You sank as fish watched rising the spheres of your last breath

And I want to know if I can save my soul

Or if I’m losing losing all control

Losing losing all control

Losing losing all control

How many people have been covered by the night

Eyes burned out in the cradle by a hell-black sun

Yes I have been a blind guest those words you uttered

Let there be light an order this century undone

And I want to know if I can save my soul

Or if I’m losing losing all control

Losing losing all control

I said losing losing all control

Yes I am losing control

Lose..

The Castle of Dromore   (trad Irish tune words Sir Harold Boulton)

The October winds lament around
The castle of Dromore
Yet peace lies in her lofty halls,
My loving treasure store
Though Autumn leaves may droop and die
A bud of Spring are you

Sing hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo, low, lan,
Hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo

Dread spirit of the Blackwater,
Clan Owen’s wild banshee
Bring no ill wind to hinder us,
My helpless babe and me
And Holy Mary pityin’ us
To Heaven for grace doth sue

Sing hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo, low, lan,
Hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo

Take time to thrive my ray of hope
In the gardens of Dromore
Take heed young eaglet till thy wings
Are feathered fit to soar
A little rest and then the world
Is full of work to do

Sing hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo, low, lan,
Hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo
Sing hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo, low, lan,
Hush-a-bye, loo, low, loo

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.

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia, 2024 Episode 11, the second of the September editions. Quotidia, is that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary.

The second edition is of course the blue moon edition so without any more ado let’s hear what Pauline Morris on the site oldtimemusic.com has this to say about Billie Holliday’s version of the song– It is a timeless jazz standard that was first introduced to the world by Billie Holiday in 1935. Written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, this heartfelt ballad has captured the hearts of millions with its melancholic lyrics and haunting melody.

Frank and Elvis and Dean, among many others have covered this song but for me, Billie Holliday’s version strikes deepest. The power and passion of her voice were evident to me as a teenager when I remember hearing for the first time her aching lament for victims of lynchings in the American South, Strange Fruit. According to Wikipedia, one version of events claims that Barney Josephson, the founder of Café Society in Greenwich Village, New York’s first integrated nightclub, heard the song and introduced it to Billie Holiday. Holiday first performed the song at Café Society in 1939. She said that singing it made her fearful of retaliation but, because its imagery reminded her of her father, she continued to sing the piece, making it a regular part of her live performances. Because of the power of the song, Josephson drew up some rules: Holiday would close with it; the waiters would stop all service in advance; the room would be in darkness except for a spotlight on Holiday’s face; and there would be no encore. During the musical introduction to the song, Holiday stood with her eyes closed, as if she were evoking a prayer.  

But that is by way of being a respectful aside. The chord sequence for Blue Moon is one I learned when first I picked up a guitar in my mid-teens. It is known as the doo- wop progression and Blue Moon is the first popular song to utilise it according to some sources. Here are a couple of poems about the moon to prepare the stage. First, Moonset by Carl Sandburg, an American poet I have quoted several times before in the Letters, Leaves of poplars pick Japanese prints against the west./Moon sand on the canal doubles the changing pictures./The moon’s good-by ends pictures./The west is empty. All else is empty. No moon-talk now./  Second, Autumn by T. E. Hulme, killed in west Flanders on 28 September, 1917 A touch of cold in the Autumn night-/I walk abroad,/And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge/Like a red-faced farmer./I did not stop to speak, but nodded,/And round about were the wistful stars/With white faces like town children.// [insert song]

Looking for a September song, I glanced at Sinatra’s September of my Years but quickly moved on as this is a song for a middle-aged male. So, wistfully, I continued my search. And I’m glad I did for I found a song that referenced the penultimate month that is more suited to one in his 75th year! Written by Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh, I was struck by the serendipity of happening, also, upon a poem by him featuring this month in its title and I’m going to recite it now.

Its title: On an apple-ripe September morning, On an apple-ripe September morning/Through the mist-chill fields I went/With a pitch-fork on my shoulder/Less for use than for devilment.//The threshing mill was set-up, I knew,/In Cassidy’s haggard last night,/And we owed them a day at the threshing/Since last year. O it was delight//To be paying bills of laughter/And chaffy gossip in kind/With work thrown in to ballast/The fantasy-soaring mind.//As I crossed the wooden bridge I wondered/As I looked into the drain/If ever a summer morning should find me/Shovelling up eels again.//And I thought of the wasps’ nest in the bank/And how I got chased one day/Leaving the drag and the scraw-knife behind,/How I covered my face with hay.//The wet leaves of the-cocksfoot/Polished my boots as I/Went round by the glistening bog-holes/Lost in unthinking joy.//I’ll be carrying bags to-day, I mused,/The best job at-the-mill/With-plenty-of-time-to-talk-of-our-loves/As we wait for the bags to fill.//Maybe Mary might call round…/And then I came to the haggard gate,/And I knew as I entered that I had come/Through fields that were part of no earthly estate.//

From Hesiod to John Clare through to Robert Frost and Seamus Heaney the themes found in nature are endlessly fortifying to the human spirit. But even great poets are subject to the fickle whims of romantic yearning. Kavanagh courted a dark-haired medical student, Hilda Moriarty, who was as dismissive of his poetry as of his advances:   Can you not, then, write about anything other than stony grey soil and bogs, Paddy?” Kavanagh replied, “I will immortalise you in poetry, Hilda. And he did. On Raglan Road is one of the greatest love songs. Kavanagh gave it to Luke Kelly of the Dubliners in a pub called Baileys. Released as the B side of a single in 1971, It’s been recorded by a rollcall of singers ever since and it is a fitting song to end this second September Letter. [insert song]

October beckons now, and it is an ambivalent month: The end of summer is not the end of the world. Here’s to October, says A.A. Milne, author of that children’s classic Winnie the Pooh. October was always the least dependable of months- full of ghosts and shadows, opines Joy Fielding, Canadian novelist. So, take care!

Blue Moon (Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart)

      C   Am F

Blue moon,

              G7    C  Am F

You saw me standing alone.

           G7          C  Am F

Without a dream in my heart,

           G7        C Am F G7

Without a love of my own.

      C Am F

Blue moon,

               G7         C     Am F

You knew just what I was there for,

             G7       C      Am F

You heard me saying a prayer for,

            G7      C F C C7

Someone I really care for.

                 Dm        G7       C       Am

And then there suddenly appeared before me.

         Dm                  G7   C

The only one my heart could ever hold.

            C6              Bm7        Em

I heard somebody whisper, please adore me.

             C                   D7        G  G7

And when I looked, the moon had turned to gold.

      C   Am F

[Blue moon,

             G7    C   Am F

Now I’m no longer alone.

            G7          C Am F

Without a dream in my heart,

          G7          C F C C7

Without a love of my own.] final verse in brackets; outro Gm- C “Blue Moon”

                 Dm        G7       C       Am

And then there suddenly appeared before me.

         Dm                  G7   C

The only one my heart could ever hold.

            C6              Bm7        Em

I heard somebody whisper, please adore me.

             C                   D7        G  G7

And when I looked, the moon had turned to gold.

      C   Am F

Blue moon,

              G7    C  Am F

Now I’m no longer alone.

           G7          C  Am F

Without a dream in my heart,

           G7        C F C

Without a love of my own.

Gm                C

Blue………….Moon

On Raglan Road (lyrics Patrick Kavanagh; music trad Dawning of the Day)

D                         G

On Raglan Road, on an autumn day,

  D       G         D

I saw her first and knew

     G                    D

That her dark hair, would weave a snare,

             Bm      A

that I might one day rue

  G               D

I saw the danger, and I passed,

            Bm      A

along the enchanted way,

      D                             G

and I said: ‘Let grief, be a fallen leaf

       D       G      D

at the dawning of the day’

   D                       G

On Grafton Street, in November,

           D        G        D

we tripped lightly along the ledge

     G                  D

Of a deep ravine, where can be seen,

             Bm        A

the worth of passion’s pledge

    G                      D

The Queen of Hearts, still making tarts,

          Bm     A

and I not making hay

      D

Oh, I loved too much and by such,

   G        D         G       D

by such, is happiness thrown away

  D                     G

I gave her gifts of the mind,

  D            G      D

I gave her the secret signs.

       G                     D

That’s known to the artists, who have known,

                 Bm        A

the true gods of sound and stone

    G                  D

And word and tint, without stint,

           Bm       A

I gave her poems to say

         D                                G

With her own name there, and her own dark hair,

     D           G         D

like clouds over fields of May

     D                              G

On a quiet street, where old ghosts meet,

  D       G       D

I see her walking now.

 G              D

Away from me so hurriedly,

          Bm     A

my reason must allow

     G                D

That I had loved, not as I should,

           Bm      A

a creature made of clay

         D

When the angel woos, the clay

     G         D            G       D

he’d lose, his wings at the dawn of day

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, 2024 Episode 10, the first of the September editions. Quotidia, is that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary. The next blue moon- (here I’m using the definition of two full moons appearing in the same calendar month) will not occur until December 31st, 2028. Instead, here in September 2024, we’ll have to make do with two Letters from Quoitidia, separated by four weeks, appearing within the same calendar month.

You don’t need to be Colombo or Sherlock to predict that the theme of love may well occur associated with moon-based songs. So, now to my first song: the theme of love is here likened to a humble stage- set with a paper moon, cardboard sea, canvas sky, muslin tree where the music of a penny arcade echoes through a phony Barnum and Bailey world. Briget Payne on the site oldtimemusic.com has this to say about the song Paper Moon– It has become an iconic jazz standard, popularised by the legendary American singer Ella Fitzgerald. Released in 1945, it was originally composed by Harold Arlen, with lyrics by E.Y. Harburg and Billy Rose. This beloved song has resonated with audiences for decades.

Indeed! I think too of Prospero’s speech in Act IV scene 1 of The Tempest: Our revels now are ended./ These our actors,/As I foretold you, were all spirits and/Are melted into air, into thin air./And like the baseless fabric of this vision,/The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,/The solemn temples, the great globe itself,/Yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve,/And like this insubstantial pageant faded,/Leave not a rack behind./ We are such stuff/As dreams are made on,// The creative human mind is phenomenal; the human brain, too.

Will Sullivan in the Smithsonian Magazine wrote Researchers have made a digital map showing a tiny chunk of a human brain…based on a brain tissue sample…the map represents a cubic millimetre…an area about half the size of a grain of rice. But even that tiny segment is overflowing with 1.4 million gigabytes of information- containing about 57,000 cells, 230 millimetres of blood vessels and 150 million synapses, the connections between neurons. So then, what would mapping just one human brain cost? Someone calculated that to be $50 billion, the computing hardware covering 140 acres.

All that for something eight billion people carry around on top of their shoulders! And yet, there is a present scientific conceit gaining ground that we are living in a vast simulation. Our seemingly authentic lives governed by our own free will- just a façade as flimsy as the setting of the song. Seems to me that such an alien technology just might as well be called God and be done with it! But I’ll leave such arguments to bulgier brains than the one I possess and just give my version of the song. [insert song]

How are you off for friends? Are any of them of the bought or fair-weather variety? And how confident are you that any one of them, following the prescription found in John 15:13, would lay down his or her life for you? If you answer “lots” then I imagine that you have a pretty good collection of hens’ teeth, too! There are hundreds and thousands of inspirational and uplifting poems and aphorisms about friendship. But I’m not going to quote any of those here. I’m sure, like me, you have plenty of fridge magnets and wall hangings to supply such sentiments.

Instead, I turn to Robert Frost whose clear-eyed and sardonic view of life and death I have referenced in previous letters. In his poem Provide Provide, he advocates even bought friendships at the end rather than being left with none. The witch that came (the withered hag)/To wash the steps with pail and rag,/Was once the beauty Abishag,//The picture pride of Hollywood./Too many fall from great and good/For you to doubt the likelihood.//Die early and avoid the fate./Or if predestined to die late,/Make up your mind to die in state.//Make the whole stock exchange your own!/If need be occupy a throne,/Where nobody can call you crone.//Some have relied on what they knew;/Others on simply being true./What worked for them might work for you.//No memory of having starred/Atones for later disregard,/Or keeps the end from being hard.//Better to go down dignified/With boughten friendship at your side/Than none at all. Provide, provide!//

In 1923, as the roaring twenties were in full swing and fortunes were being made by bootleggers during the Prohibition era, pianist Jimmy Cox wrote what was to become the blues standard, Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out. And in September 1929, just before the Wall Street Crash ushered in the Great Depression, Bessie Smith recorded this great song setting the standard for all subsequent covers. Query: Will he or won’t he? More rhetorical than interrogatory, that question- of course I will! Great songs exist for the modest talents among us as well as the icons. [insert song]

The next post will be standing in for the blue moon which won’t appear this month. You’ll hear a well-known song about this cool-colour lunar phenomenon as well as a seasonal song. Let’s conclude with this from Stephen King: But when fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. If that’s too astringent how about Voltaire, Wine is the divine juice of September?

It’s Only a Paper Moon  (Music, Harold Arlen; lyrics E.Y. Harburg and Billy Rose)

Bb       Dm7    Cm7   F7

Say it’s only a paper moon

D#             Bb

Sailing over a cardboard sea

Bb                 D#

But it wouldn’t be make-believe

   Cm7 F7          Bb

If you believed in me

Bb        Dm7    Cm7    F7

Yes, it’s only a canvas sky

D#             Bb

Hanging over a muslin tree

Bb                 D#

But it wouldn’t be make-believe

   Cm7 F7          Bb

If you believed in me

    Cm7 C#m7 Dm7

Without your love

       D#    Dm7    Bb

It’s a honky-tonk parade

   Cm7  C#m7 Dm7

Without your love

       D#                 D#m7

It’s a melody played in a penny arcade

Bb     Dm7        Cm7    F7

It’s a barnum and bailey world

D#               Bb

Just as phony as it can be

Bb                 D#

But it wouldn’t be make-believe

   Cm7 F7         Bb

If you believed in me

Nobody Loves You When You’re Down and Out

[Verse]

C                E7        A           A7

Once I lived the life of a millionaire

Dm            A7            Dm

 Spent all my money, didn’t have any cares

F            F#dim7            C           A7

 Took all my friends out for a mighty good time

D7                        G7

 We bought bootleg liquor, champagne and wine

C         E7     A       A7

 Then I began to fall so low

Dm           A7               Dm

 Lost all my good friends, had nowhere to go

F         F#dim7     C       A7

 I Get my Hands on a Dollar Again

D7                             G7

 I’ll hang on to it, till that old eagle grins because …

[Chorus]

C  E7   A       A7

 Nobody knows you

Dm           A7       Dm

 When you’re down and out

F        F#dim7  C       A7

 In your pocket, not one penny

D7                       G7

 And as for friends, you don’t have any

C             E7           A          A7

 When you get back on your feet again

Dm         A7               Dm

 Everybody Wants to Be your Long Lost Friend

F            F#dim7      C       A7

 I said it’s strange without any doubt

D7                            G7

 Nobody knows you when you’re down and out

[Solo]

[Chorus]

     C  E7   A       A7

Lord, Nobody knows you

Dm           A7       Dm

 When you’re down and out

F        F#dim7  C       A7

 In your pocket, not one penny

D7                       G7

 And as for friends, you don’t have any

C             E7           A          A7

 When you get back on your feet again

Dm         A7               Dm

 Everybody wants to be your long lost friend

F            F#dim7      C       A7

 I said it’s strange without any doubt

[Coda]

D7

 Nobody knows you (nobody knows you)

F

 Nobody knows you (nobody knows you)

D7     G7      N.C.

Nobody knows you

                         B9 C9

When you’re down and out

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.

Welcome to Letters from Quotidia, 2024 Episode 9, the August edition. Quotidia, no matter the season, no matter the hemisphere, is that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary.

For my first song, it doesn’t matter much the season or the hemisphere because it’s indoors at a nightclub where a bossa band is playing for a clientele who prefer to shun the outdoors and healthful activities for a gloomy interior redolent of strangely smelling smoke as bar staff pour drinks from unlabelled bottles taken from under the counter. Ah well, to each their own!

Several months ago, in Episode 3, I referred to the poem Sport by Langston Hughes. Here it is again to set the stage, Life/For him/Must be/The shivering of/A great drum/Beaten with swift sticks/Then at the closing hour/The lights go out/And there is no music at all/ And death becomes/An empty cabaret/And eternity an unblown saxophone/And yesterday a glass of gin/Drunk long/Ago. Something in the poem piqued my interest- did I identify with the ageing Sport of the poem? Perhaps.

The worldwide 1965 hit The Girl from Ipanema introduced the cool, sophistication of Bossa Nova to a wide audience. Inspired by a 17-year-old girl, Heloisa Pinheiro, who walked past a particular bar every day on her way to the beach. The writer of the original, Portuguese lyrics, Vinicius de Moraes, who was seated in that bar with his friend, the musician Antonio Carlos Jobim wrote later, she was “the paradigm of the young Carioca- a golden teenage girl, a mixture of flower and mermaid, full of light and grace, the sight of whom is also sad, in that she carries with her, on her route to the sea, the feeling of youth that fades, of the beauty that is not ours alone—it is a gift of life in its beautiful and melancholic constant ebb and flow.” What a lovely recollection!

Something about Langston Hughes’ Sport made me think of an old guy, an habitué of the club, dancing with a pretend partner as the last number of the night is played by the band and the bouncers move in to move him along. Here now, is Just Call Me Sport, my Bossa tribute to the Langston Hughes poem, [insert song]

The next song is, arguably, the most overplayed, over sung, over loved and over hated of any Irish ballad. Its antecedents are not entirely Irish- I have even read somewhere that it has Korean origins- but let’s not go down that particular rabbit hole.  I speak, of course, of Danny Boy and I’m sure a lot of you knew that before I named the culprit!

Jane Ross, a member of the Anglo-Irish ascendency, born in Limavady, County Derry in 1810, was a music collector and in 1853 she sent, among other songs, The Londonderry Air to George Petrie of Dublin, a bit of a polymath, who published it with other songs in 1855 as Ancient music of Ireland. From that time its popularity as a piece of music has been undimmed: the subject of many arrangements in many places.

But it wasn’t until 1913 that it reached its apotheosis when English barrister, Frederic Edward Weatherly, KC wrote the words that are still sung today. And it wasn’t a one-off- it is estimated that he wrote the lyrics to some 3,000 songs, including that World War I favourite, Roses of Picardy. This song, with music composed by Haydn Wood, became so popular in Britain and with soldiers on the Western Front that the sheet music earned Wood today’s equivalent of more than a million dollars!

That Danny Boy has been co-opted by Irish nationalists as a rebel song is an historical irony worthy of note! And as to the melody’s originator? Well, we just don’t know who that is or what thoughts may have underpinned its composition. We just know that Jane Ross heard an itinerant fiddler playing outside her house in Limavady and asked if she might notate the tune.

The rest is history. The song is popular at funerals and memorial services. Although, not at Catholic requiem Masses where it is banned as secular and sacrilegious- another irony, perhaps? Opera star Renee Fleming sang it at Washington National Cathedral in 2018 during the memorial for US Senator and war hero John McCain. It was at his request- in acknowledgement of his Irish ancestry.

So, under such a weight of contested history, opprobrium, and adulation, why would I choose to cover it? Because- in spite of all the reasons I should avoid it, not least being my questionable vocal adequacy for the task, the song has power. There is a magic that happens when the right words meet the right melody, as was the case with Danny Boy.

Every listener has the right to read into the song what he or she wishes and for me the themes of longing, love and land resonate strongly within the song. I use an arrangement for my version which I found on the site Ultimate Guitar, and I thank the anonymous contributor from the Netherlands for the wonderful chord sequence that I have used for this great song. [insert song]

In September there will be no blue moon, instead (poor substitute though it may be) there will be two podcasts separated by four weeks within that month! So, until then, may I leave you with the well-worn quotation from the King James’ Version of John chapter 15 verse 13- Greater love hath no man that this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Volumes have been written about these words, but I believe it can stretch to encompass acts as non-life-threatening as being kind, taking time to say hello or sharing a smile to brighten another’s day.

Just Call Me Sport (words and music Quentin Bega)

O baby baby just call me Sport

Listen to that bossa band playing for us both

Before we dance let’s share a glass or two

Then spin around the floor just like lovers do

And if they say what fools we be

Don’t get flustered just follow my lead

Take my hand and sway and softly sing

We’re just having fun we’re just doin’ our thing

 And if anyone happens to object

Just shine them on- they won’t have any effect

And so it goes but as I know

This is just a dream I’m having as I’m sent

Away Sport time you’re on your way

We’ll see you again tomorrow the doormen say

So take my hand and sway and softly sing

We’re just having fun we’re just doin’ our thing

 And if anyone happens to object

Just shine them on- they won’t have any effect

And so it goes but as I know

This is just a dream I’m having as I’m sent

Away Sport time you’re on your way

We’ll see you again tomorrow-maybe- the doormen say

Danny Boy (lyrics Fredrick Weatherly, music trad Irish)

         C Cmaj7     C7                   F        Fm

Oh Danny boy,    the pipes, the pipes are calling

             C         Am               D7   G

From glen to glen and down the mountain side

             C Cmaj7  C7            F     Fm

The summer’s gone and all the roses falling

               C   Am      Dm     G      C

‘Tis you, ’tis you    must go and I must bide

G   Am   G/B  C         F               C

But come ye   back when summer’s in the meadow

G  Am   G/B  Am      F          C          D7   G

Or when the valley’s hushed and white with snow

            C C/E   F        D/F#   C  Em/B Am Am7/G Fm

And I’ll be here in sunshine or in sha-     dow

         C       Am    Dm    G        C      G7/B

Oh Danny boy, oh Danny boy I love you so

          C Cmaj7  C7            F     Fm

But if he come and all the roses dying

         C G/B    Am     Am/G     D/F#    G

And I am dead, as dead I well may be

                C Cmaj7  C7               F     Fm

You’ll come and find the place where I am lying

              C  Am    F   G         C

And kneel and say   an Ave there for me

G  Am G/B   C            F               C

And I shall feel, though soft you tread above me

G   Am   G/B Am Am/G   F       C/E       D/F#   G

And then my grave will richer, sweeter be

G   Am7 G/B  C    C/E F       D/F#     C   Em/B  Am  Am7/G  Ab7

For you will bend and tell me that you lo- ve    me

            C       Am      Dm      G       C   G7

And I shall rest in peace until you come to me

            C       Am7     Dm7     G11     C/G

And I shall rest in peace until you come to me

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.