Back to Earth
I am finally back on home turf and, boy howdy, does my blog's audience seem to have come on in the meantime. In addition to my expanding American audience (a full 7 Yankee pageviews today, probably a record), new converts have swept in from the plains of the Iberian peninsula to the sun-beaten streets of India. So too I have had readers from a mystical land called 'Czechia', which apparently produces highly competent historians, has a sacred river called Alf and allows you to stay young forever, though I may be confusing it with some other locations. My second-largest audience today was from Ireland, a fact which is not easy to explain - perhaps it is my deep love for folk music that attracts these Gaelic souls, or my dazzling emerald wardrobe, or the fact that I know that the correct response to 'Top of the Morning to You' is 'And the Rest of the Day to Yourself' (not, as is commonly believed, 'feck off you papist bastard')?
Speaking of folk music, this seems like an excellent place to advertise my old folk band. Advertise isn't quite right, because we no longer play together, but I'm determined to egg the fact that I used to front a ten-piece folk band for all it is worth. It was called 27 Strings, because all of the stringed instruments together had 19 strings and because our accordionist realised he couldn't do that AND play a mandolin at the same time. Vocals, accordion, keyboard, guitar, banjo, double bass, kit, trumpet, trombone and a then-12-year-old violinist who we naturally referred to as the 'kiddie fiddler' combined to make a lot of complementary hog roasts at fairs and pubs across Hertfordshire and Essex and a gig at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, amongst other exciting locations. You can in fact still like our page on Facebook!
Back from Malta now. Our flight yesterday was delayed, but the delay was made worthwhile by a group of drunk 70-somethings who decided to play Abba and dance to it by the gate. I was right next to them and joined in with the singing. Some of our fellow travellers were less excited by this development than I was.
Today I have returned to the grind of REVISION!! Hopefully this blog can be a bit of an outlet while I attempt to learn all the things that have ever happened in the past for my exams. Incidentally, no pictures today, as my computer is crying from all the work tabs I have been opening. Obviously I won't be writing about the work I have d
Before I sleep and forget, I've been meaning to explain the blog's title, not that it is too mysterious. It is a quote from one of my favourite musicals, Floyd Collins, which tells the real story of a caver (Floyd) who was trapped underground in Kentucky in the 1920s. One of the other characters imagines Floyd praying to be freed, and declaring that when his time comes to die he will do it 'where I can see sky'. It's a really beautiful quote, though the meaning is not directly what I had in mind when I named this blog.
Closer to my meaning is the following passage of song from Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George.
Mapping out a sky
What you feel like, planning a sky
How you feel wen voices that come
Through the window, go
Until they distance and die
Until there's nothing but sky
This section captures the kind of total absorption that an artist can feel when they are in the process of creating. Writing, I think, is the same in this respect as painting (and songwriting!), and it's for this sort of craving to step back and craft your own sky, and your own perspective on the world, that something like writing a blog speaks. Hopefully this page will function as a place where I can see my own sky, and you can come here to see it too. Again, no pretensions to Sondheim here!
I finished this blog over breakfast, because I think morning writing might be more constructive.
RJLF
Speaking of folk music, this seems like an excellent place to advertise my old folk band. Advertise isn't quite right, because we no longer play together, but I'm determined to egg the fact that I used to front a ten-piece folk band for all it is worth. It was called 27 Strings, because all of the stringed instruments together had 19 strings and because our accordionist realised he couldn't do that AND play a mandolin at the same time. Vocals, accordion, keyboard, guitar, banjo, double bass, kit, trumpet, trombone and a then-12-year-old violinist who we naturally referred to as the 'kiddie fiddler' combined to make a lot of complementary hog roasts at fairs and pubs across Hertfordshire and Essex and a gig at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, amongst other exciting locations. You can in fact still like our page on Facebook!
Back from Malta now. Our flight yesterday was delayed, but the delay was made worthwhile by a group of drunk 70-somethings who decided to play Abba and dance to it by the gate. I was right next to them and joined in with the singing. Some of our fellow travellers were less excited by this development than I was.
Today I have returned to the grind of REVISION!! Hopefully this blog can be a bit of an outlet while I attempt to learn all the things that have ever happened in the past for my exams. Incidentally, no pictures today, as my computer is crying from all the work tabs I have been opening. Obviously I won't be writing about the work I have d
Before I sleep and forget, I've been meaning to explain the blog's title, not that it is too mysterious. It is a quote from one of my favourite musicals, Floyd Collins, which tells the real story of a caver (Floyd) who was trapped underground in Kentucky in the 1920s. One of the other characters imagines Floyd praying to be freed, and declaring that when his time comes to die he will do it 'where I can see sky'. It's a really beautiful quote, though the meaning is not directly what I had in mind when I named this blog.
Closer to my meaning is the following passage of song from Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George.
Mapping out a sky
What you feel like, planning a sky
How you feel wen voices that come
Through the window, go
Until they distance and die
Until there's nothing but sky
This section captures the kind of total absorption that an artist can feel when they are in the process of creating. Writing, I think, is the same in this respect as painting (and songwriting!), and it's for this sort of craving to step back and craft your own sky, and your own perspective on the world, that something like writing a blog speaks. Hopefully this page will function as a place where I can see my own sky, and you can come here to see it too. Again, no pretensions to Sondheim here!
I finished this blog over breakfast, because I think morning writing might be more constructive.
RJLF
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