6th July 2021
So here it was
Clarity - comes from a short lived period of my life – high speed transitory – and forms probably the main track from the 3rd Album of songs I made, in 2010, called A Love Letter (a love song) To This, Your Melody. Not many people heard it – but one of the people who saw it said – “I don't like the title – it looks like a Modest Mouse Song”.
I should call it out from the start – the lyrics are mainly about an experience I had – which, actually, I sometimes don't think is such a cool thing to write about. The sentiment doesn't really have a geographical place or time – it is fairly overarching. I cannot get away from the fact that most of my favourite music in the world is sad – or rather – melancholic. Clarity is melancholy for a something which I am not too sure what I am missing. In some ways it is a sad nostalgia for an imagined period – which has passed – and I cannot really remember.
Geographically – it was written about a 10 day period spent walking on my own in the mountains in Nepal in 2009. That sentence almost made me be sick in my own mouth. People's experiences are people's experiences – and I do not like it when people relay their stories of great experiences - of things out side of the their everyday environment – as I always have the impression of a virtual slide show of Holiday Snaps, where the audience simply cannot relate.
It was the case though. It was a rugged period of time – and I went into every emotion I could feel – and in some ways found some new ones. I am sometimes at my most happy when lost in the sadness of feeling very much alone. You can get this when listening to music. It’s as if you can feel so alone that the universe becomes so overpowering – you don't feel alone....but you feel alone. I think my favourite type of music can make me feel like this – without being stuck up between 4000-5000 metres – and absolutely feeling alone. I am not so comfortable in expressing it – but most of the time when I pick up an acoustic guitar – it goes near this territory. The territory, the landscape of living in Nep - BREAK IN WRITING -
---RETURN TO WRITING – 4 WEEKS LATER -
The territory, the landscape of living in Nep // - has given way to something more appropriate. I am going to jump to Song 2 – the reworking I did for this months CD Single. I decided to re-write and re-record the song with the fragments of remembered lyrics I wrote – which were used for the original skeletal version of the song.
What I remember is this; - that I was looking out of the window of a train, whilst transitioned in a meesly, southern English train station – probably Westbury – where all trains seem to pass through on the way from Southampton to… anywhere in Southern England. I jotted down some basic lyrics whilst looking at the transient situation outside of the train window. It must have been in Autumn, 2009, having gotten back from the Himalayas in June. I started a PGCE in Primary School teaching - and within that year also wrote and home recorded the album.
There is the interesting way in which songs grow – basically around a kind of sentiment – that seems to be, kind of just there in the the first place. I was feeling a certain thing sat on the train - looking out of the window at a young woman – somewhere in her early twenties – stood on the station platform. I think this was before smart phones had arrived to steal the intervals between things occurring. This young person was holding a large bag on her shoulder, with a couple of other items at her feet stood next to the white line – and was looking down at the railway line. It felt like a moment in time that was gently happening - and I felt sad for the situation. She had a cut fringe – and her eyes were fixed downwards. I wrote “sad eyes, lonely eyes, you court the ground to avoid mine”. I then went on with the immature attempt at poetry; and at some point the train moved out of the station.
That piece of writing, after I had gotten home, I had originally wound around the guitar bit of the song that became Clarity – through that winter of 2009/10. It widdled around in the air of 18 Anstey Street, the shared house I started with Richard Boyes and Paul T Carter. When it came to recording the song onto the album, the entire lyrics were re-written and the song transported to somewhere around a particular mountain pass thousands of miles away.
18 Anstey Street - I personally - have wound into mythology; mainly because I find it interesting to do so. Living in shared houses – can do this; particularly when the time has passed. Having returned from Nepal/India – I was so grateful for England again. It was a classic example of needing to go there in order to come back – and it felt as if there was an invisible movie script going on at that time.
I just looked up the email I sent Rich – I think after I had finished the 10 days walking – which had occurred after spending 2 months teaching English in an orphanage, and before the last 2 months consolidating some of my experiences - reaching some kind of conclusion, in India.
cheers mate
in response to your last email, i cant remember what you wrote..just stuff about communal living! Yeah - lets get a veg box...you can eat the carrots
im well up for england! i value and miss it..and am feeling strangely patriotic to the craphole that it is! maybe you got this patriotism from being out here when you were younger. i appreciate all ive got back home.
so yeah alls good. what is good news is that through a lot of buddhist reading and experiences i have a increased interest in jesus and christianity....so i look forward to us having a spiritually grounded household..based on the fundamental principles that both our religions teach. I am very much buddhist in how I think about things -this is clearer now – which means i am very much interested in learning more in christian thinking.i think you would be surprised at how with mature thought and debate there is a great lot that both can teach each other...it would seem they are very similar apart from a few things.
..one thing I'm sick of in India is all this new age spiritual crap....hippies!
the one thing both our religions teach is THE CUTTING OUT OF BULLSHIT
in authenticity..
so heres cheers to that
so this is all very healthy!
see you mate
scat x
This new re-worked version of the old version of this song was helped along by being able to use Kyle Abram's Piano – which now exists in Norman Abram's Old Deckchair Store; in the room where trampoline beds used to be sown, and deckchairs were painted blue. The entire Matthew Powder Big Band was born and killed off in the small room next door to this – where Kyle houses a drumkit, a small PA, and some guitar amps. (The Mathew Powder Big Band will have to feature in Future Chapters of this ongoing story thing). I re-wrote the lyrics with what I thought was the way I would have wrote them back in 2009 – and recorded it simply. Kyle was wandering around, in and out, whilst I was kefuffling on the white and black notes on his Piano – probably befuddled at how long it takes me to find what I want to play.
In amongst this, I asked Kyle if he would sit down, and play along, in one take - to this unknown song – so that we could make a recording of it. He agreed – and this became Duet. I think this will be the last thing Kyle and I ever record together - unless something changes.
The upshot of all of this is that now I actually don't know which version of the song was meant to be. I remember playing it at an acoustic gig (one of 3 I've ever done) in the basement of a now non-existant bar called The Arts House. My friend Rachel Burns was sat on the floor at the front of a small bunch of people, and I remember her looking straight at me when I was singing this. I couldn't understand her gaze. This was as much of a moment as it was when Kyle wandered in on me trying to play his piano; or of him sat next to me, wizzing through it as an improvised duet; or when two wind-baked children with snotty noses found me wandering alone at 3500 metres; or when I played Clarity on a CD Walkman to a seated Matty Smith on a Winters Day in the grounds of Bath Spa University after not knowing him very long and watching him (from a fair distance) actually listen to it through to the end. It is a song I have never really known what to do with.
