All Becomes Art (Part One)

No music today, just a poem, mainly because that poem (the one in the video above) is in a new book. The book is called All Becomes Art – Part One and it is published by Speculative Books. All the writing in it is inspired or in some way connected with the work of the brilliant visual artist Joan Eardley (1921-1963). There are more than 50 other contributors (and I think a Part Two still to come) so there’s plenty to explore. There was due to be a launch for this book in Glasgow today but it has been postponed till late March so I thought I’d tell you about it here (it’s available now from Speculative Books). 

My poem in the book is She’s not there – something I wrote back in 2007 after seeing Joan Eardley’s 1943 self-portrait a couple of times in Edinburgh (you can see that self-portrait on the National Galleries page I linked to already). I already knew about her because we lived on the Angus coast in Scotland from 2002 (in Auchmithie, then Montrose) and she lived for years just up the coast in Catterline. Although she died in the 1960s she is very much still a presence in that part of the world and she painted its landscapes over and over. Her studio in Catterline (‘the Watchie’) is still a working studio and the current resident is the hugely talented Stuart Buchanan (we are the proud owners of a couple of his paintings).

Joan Eardley’s life story caught my attention for various reasons but, as often happens, it was something we shared that dug into my brain and is certainly part of the background to this poem. Her father had mental health issues and killed himself when she was a young girl (as mine did). Also, like me, “the details of his death were not explained” to her until years later (I actually found out about mine from a girl I met at secondary school, something I wrote about on Day 5 of my Fun A Day project last year). Joan Eardley’s father had fought in World War One and died in 1929. Mine was a village GP in the very early days of the NHS (he qualified during WW2) and died in 1973. I keep a kind of mental list of well-known people who talk or write about the fact that their fathers killed themselves (I don’t really want to, but I do). The lovely poet/writer Salena Godden, for example, is another person on the list. Every now and then I wonder how much it affects a person’s work to have that particular event in their background. I suppose it must (Salena’s most recent book is Mrs Death Misses Death). I don’t think it is the worst thing that can happen to a person (for many of us in this situation these weren’t fathers we knew very well, often they were already absent in many ways) but it is still a significant thing and it stays with you more than you want it to maybe. It makes you more aware of death than the average child, perhaps, makes you less trusting of the stories people tell you.

This poem has always done well for me (it was named, of course, after the song by the Zombies, though I first knew the Santana version as my next brother up was a Santana fan). I am grateful to the publishers for still accepting it for this lovely wee book even though it has appeared both online and in my own first book in 2008. I’ve never been a big fan of the whole “we can’t accept it if even your cat has read it” approach taken by so much of the poetry industry (I understand it but I find it tiresome all the same) so big cheers to Speculative Books for being a bit more flexible. We can get too tied up in the admin of our art at times I think and that can be counter-productive. Joan Eardley stood out in all the elements and did her fabulous paintings – she made the art – and that’s the most important thing. Plus I enjoy this kind of detail: poet Andrew McMillan recently tweeted (regarding a poem of his that “people often seem to return to”): “it was rejected from tons of magazines, disappeared into competitions- always just write what you want to write.” Sounds good to me.

I’m nearly done here but did I say “no music”? It seems I (almost) lied as Kris Drever (the songwriter I wrote about on Day 19 of this year’s Fun a Day series) has a song about Joan Eardley and Catterline (it’s called Catterline). Along with songs by lots of other Scottish songwriters, it’s on an album put together by Stonehaven Folk Club called Sense of Place that you can get here. I just ordered a copy.

Outro - Songwriters' Choices

“I’m gonna take myself a piece of sunshine”

It’s been a week or so since I finished my Fun A Day Dundee writing project for this year. If you missed it, it was a post a day in January, each one about a different song (and you can see the full list of the 31 songs back here). Every day I wrote about how I got to know the song, about the songwriter/s and about the artists that had performed or recorded the songs too. In many cases I had responses from the songwriters about their song (and in a couple of cases quite long interviews). In one instance (for the song Piece of Clay on Day 5) I had a response from Carleen Anderson who recorded that song in the 1990s. I met many of the songs in the project via the folk club in Montrose but there were a few tangents too. The oldest song was from the 1930s, the newest from last year.

I would like to say a big thank you to every songwriter and artist who contributed to the series of posts in some way and also to all those who shared, retweeted, commented and/or liked any of the posts. Please remember to support all those artists (and others) when you can – I think I’ve doubled my Bandcamp library in the last couple of months! The recent Spotify saga does seem to mean a lot of people are reconsidering how they access their music and hopefully that will lead to better times for musicians.

One of the things I asked of the songwriters last month was to name a song by someone else that they wished they had written. Obviously, it’s a bit of a daft question – most of us love so many songs that it’s hard to pick one – but these things are always just ways in to new (and old) music. I know it’s the kind of question you might give a different answer to on any given day, and what it’s brought up is by no means a definitive list of all the great songs in the world, but it is a list of good songs (no more, no less). Because there was so much else in each of the 31 posts, I thought these recommendations might get a bit lost so below is a list of the songs that were mentioned (and there’s a YouTube playlist of them here). I’m not going to say who suggested which song so if you want to know that you’ll have to read all the posts (and if you’ve read them once and forgotten you’ll just have to read them all again). Most of the versions in the YouTube playlist are by the songwriters in question but for one, where there are two songwriters and each has a separate version, I picked a version by someone else, so as not to pick a favourite.

God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind) written by Randy Newman. 

The Freedom Come-All-Ye written by Hamish Henderson 

I’m Looking for My Own Lone Ranger written by Charlie Dore and Ricky Ross

I’m Still Here written by Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan

Winter Wonderland written by Felix Bernard and lyricist Richard Bernhard Smith.

Man on a String written by Jason Feddy 

On a Sea of Fleur de Lis written by Richard Shindell 

One Foot in the Grave written by Rayna Gellert & Kieran Kane

Tonya’s Twirls written by Loudon Wainwright III 

Making Pies written by Patty Griffin

Who Knows Where the Time Goes written by Sandy Denny

Diamonds and Rust written by Joan Baez

Samson written by Regina Spektor

If I Stayed written by Kristina Olsen

Torn Screen Door written by David Francey

Shepherd written by Anaïs Mitchell

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin

Goodbye Joe written by Bid (of The Monochrome Set)

Blackbird written by Paul McCartney

Anarchy in the UK written by Paul Cook, Steve Jones, John Lydon, Glen Matlock

A Case of You written by Joni Mitchell

Blue written by Joni Mitchell

I Think It Is Going to Rain Today written by Randy Newman

Blues Run the Game written by Jackson C. Frank

I really enjoyed the varied responses to this (and indeed to all the questions). At least one of the songwriters in the list above (Anaïs Mitchell) has been all over the radio here in the past couple of weeks, thanks to a brilliant new album. There were some lovely details in other parts of the interviews last month too (for starters, Kim Edgar’s save-the-day art teacher and Rhona Macfarlane’s lyrics written on a till receipt). As I wrote in some of the posts, research included listening to lots of songwriter interviews and especially the Mastertapes radio series. A detail I loved in one of those was from the Suzanne Vega Mastertapes from 2012 where she talked about playing whole albums (instead of just single tracks) and the reaction of her daughter to listening to a full Bob Dylan album (‘why are we sitting here listening to a whole bunch of songs by the same guy?’). I almost mentioned Suzanne Vega in the Rachel Sermanni post on Day 30 as I felt they had something in common but it felt forced and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what I wanted to say so I dropped that idea.

After finishing the January posting frenzy, it was a dash down to a family funeral in Leeds, England for us last week. The photo at the top of the post is the Angel of the North in Gateshead that we passed on the way south (and in fact a song of the same name was mentioned in one of the posts last month too). Funerals (and traveling in general) heighten emotions and responses, I think, and it was flash after flash (roads, big art, first snowdrops of the year at the crematorium, music, even a poem, music, back on roads again). Some of the music I encountered last week was watching an online concert last Friday evening by one of January’s featured artists (Day 26’s Blue Rose Code – this time as a duo, Ross Wilson and Paul Harrison). In the concert Ross talked about Elton John (interesting as one of his songs is in the list in this post – can you remember which songwriter picked that in January?). Then for their cover version Ross and Paul did a song I absolutely loved in my teens (Sunshine after the Rain by Elkie Brooks, hear it here). That single by Elkie came out in 1977 but hung around on commercial radio a lot longer (certainly I heard it on Radio Tees in the 1980s and cried along with it every time my teenage heart felt broken, i.e., quite a lot). I didn’t know it back then but it was written in 1968 by Ellie Greenwich, who I should have heard of, she was a big Brill building writer, but in honesty I never have done until now, even though a quick peek at her Wikipedia page will tell you “she wrote or co-wrote Da Doo Ron Ron, Be My Baby, Then He Kissed Me, Do Wah Diddy Diddy, Christmas (Baby Please Come Home), Hanky Panky, Chapel of Love, Leader of the Pack, and River Deep – Mountain High, among others”. Sunshine after the Rain was on Ellie Greenwich’s 1968 album Ellie Greenwich Composes, Produces & Sings and there was another version of the song by Berri in 1994/1995.

Back at home in Dundee this Sunday I was listening to one of my favourite radio shows (Cerys Matthews on BBC 6 Music) and she was interviewing the poet Roger Robinson who picked one of my all-time favourite songs to play (I Think I’ll Call It Morning by Gil Scott-Heron, written by Gil and Brian Jackson, the song is on the 1971 album Pieces of a Man and the quote at the top of the post is from this song). Regular readers will know I am a huge fan of Gil Scott-Heron (and I did mention him in one of this January’s posts too). I saw him live only once (at the Leeds Irish Centre, maybe in 1992, he was brilliant) and I wrote a poem about him too (it’s on this post back in 2012). I’ve always thought I Think I’ll Call It Morning would make a perfect funeral song (I Think I’ll Call It Mourning?) and it’s certainly high on my list for that. Like many great songs this one has joy and sadness mixed up so thoroughly that you don’t know what you’re feeling as you listen (but whatever it is, it’s amazing). 

I’m not sure where else this blog will go in 2022. I suppose that’s kind of exciting. See you there.