Two bridges

Two bridges to hoy us over the gap between Oxford and Devon. The first, courtesy of College Cruisers:

The second, a present to myself of a collection of short stories by that most quintessential of Oxford authors, J.R.R. Tolkien, illustrated by Alan Lee, famously a Dartmoor resident.

Did I say two bridges? Two Bridges is, of course, a Dartmoor village, so I suppose really that makes three.

And as I'm using 'bridge' metaphorically, and the word metaphor is itself a metaphor, derived from the Greek meaning 'to carry over', I should really say four. Four bridges.

I'll stop there - this is what happens to your brain when you start stuffing the detritus of your entire life into boxes.

Quadrivium

In the late Middle Ages, students at Oxford were put through a syllabus known as the quadrivium. They studied arithmetic, music, astronomy, and geometry, the better to know God through the perfection of his (neo-Platonic) universe.

I came to Oxford in 1991 to study for a doctorate in Ecology, but being something of a medieval soul I tarried and kept to a quadrivium of my own. I couldn't tell you whether the universe is perfect or not (though it seems pretty good to me), but I've read a lot (not nearly enough!), and now that I've learned that the most important things can't be said in words at all it's time to graduate.

After twenty-odd years in Oxford, and nearly ten in our cramped little flat, it's time to look out of another window.

At the end of the month we're moving home, to Devon, to a village on the edge of Dartmoor that will be very familiar to readers in this neck of the blogosphere.

Oxford is a hard place to leave. I did it twice before and both times came running back with my tail between my legs. The third time will be for keeps. And so I've spent the last few weeks visiting my favourite haunts, saying good bye.

I shall miss the Bodleian Library, where I've been able to read any book I wanted, where I've pored over ancient manuscripts (William Stukeley's diaries no less), and where I've spent hours gazing into the middle distance.

I shall miss Blackwells, one of the great bookshops of the world, where I've frittered away more time and hard-earned cash than I care to mention.

I shall miss New College cloisters at the very heart of Oxford. A temple of peace (until the Harry Potter fans arrive).

I shall miss Oxford's other side, the gargoyles, grotesques and misericords who poke their tongues out at the agelasts, providing a necessary counterbalance to all that erudition.

Mandrake plant in the Botanic Gardens

The best that can be said about the Oxfordshire countryside is that it is inoffensive (no wild hills here) but over the years I've grown to love its gentle beauty.

I shall miss its folk customs and the calendrical rituals we've invented around them, like our May walk to see Eynsham Morris do their thing.

I shall miss the Catweazle Club, Matt Sage's enduring creation, where I've been playing for seventeen years and where I cut my teeth.

Photo by Richard Markham

I shall miss the wonderfully vibrant session scene, where I learnt to play my instruments (thanks, it must be said, to the forbearance of my elders and betters) and where I've had some extraordinary nights of communal music making.

I shall miss the canal and its Gyptians, more hardy than I, who live and work upon the cut.

I shall miss the wonderful alternative community - my tribe. I shall miss my friends terribly.

I shall miss my work colleagues, long-suffering all, and I shall even miss my students. But I shan't miss the traffic, the tourists...

...the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, the astronomical rents, the bland, stultifying homogeneity of the new-rich-commuters in their seven-bedroom new-builds and gated communities...

...the ever-lengthening reach of London.

But enough of that. Most of all, I shall miss the spirit of old Oxford itself, those moments when you round a corner and you're stopped in your tracks by all that age and beauty. 

No wonder that Tolkein, Lewis, Pullman 'n all flourished here. The never-never otherworldliness of Oxford suffuses my music too. I've thrived on it. I found my wife here (in truth, she found me) and it's fair to say that I found myself too.

The poet Robert Graves put it like this in his Oxford Addresses on Poetry. 

'Oxford' he said, 'happens to own a peculiar báraka, or blessedness - a kindly, non-doctrinaire, generous spirit, unmatched anywhere else in the world. Enjoy it, maintain it!'

As I prepare to graduate, I trust that's exactly what I did.

Astrolabe - live at Catweazle

Remember Astrolabe? We've just recorded it with Telling the Bees, and here it is played live at the Catweazle Club. Thanks to James Bell for recording.

Going home

(Sequence taken with Lomography Diana Mini camera using expired Fuji Velvia 100F film, cross-processed)

May Morning 2013

Another May Morning and this time the weather was perfect, even if the cold air played havoc with the bagpipes: if they weren't wildly out of tune, they simply parped like a flock of dyspeptic geese.

Photo by Donald Judge

But by the time the sun rose over Hertford College they'd warmed up, we'd got there and the magic was done.

Photo by Simon Bentley

Thanks to everyone who came and played with the Whirly Band, to those who came to dance, and to Zoe for giving us such a hearty breakfast afterwards.

Up the May!

Robin Williamson

I have no doubt that if the institution still existed, Robin Williamson would hold the title of 'Nightingale', the Chief Bard of Britain. I owe him a lot.

I had piano lessons at school and the experience was dismal. I struggled to read music (to this day I muddle crotchets, quavers and minims) and in any case hated the pieces I was supposed to learn. I never really warmed to the sound of the instrument. When I scraped a pass at grade 3 my teacher told my parents that I had no musical ability and that they were wasting their money. Though I yearned to play it seemed that music was for others, for those who'd been born with the elusive gift.

When I left school I spent a long weekend with my friend Andy, a fine rock guitarist, down in the New Forest (I don't know what happened to him, or whether he still plays - we lost touch). He'd just picked up the tin whistle and so I sat under broad oaks while he played tunes learned from early Clannad albums. It was all rather haunting.

So I thought 'perhaps even me, with my total lack of musical ability, might be able to get a tune from a whistle!'

After a certain amount of aimless noodling I realised I needed to learn a bit more systematically. I spent a day playing and rewinding a Clannad tape, figuring out 'The Harvest Home' by jotting down how many holes I needed to cover. It was a slow, laborious process.

Then, when I got to University, a friend passed me a book, The Penny Whistle Book by Robin Williamson.

I think Williamson wrote it when he was living in California, playing with the Merry Band: certainly the American can do attitude shines through. Using the US-favoured system of whole, half, quarter and eighth notes (mathematical sense at last!) he taught me to read music. With his characteristic wit and wisdom he led me through ever more complex tunes, through ornamentation (cuts and rolls), vibrato and how to make the whistle sing, all the while making me feel like I was embarking on some kind of adventure.

It was the perfect start. The whistle led to the mandolin and to singing, and also, in the other direction, to my becoming a piper (my logic being, well, if I can get a tune out of the whistle, maybe I can get a tune out of a mandolin, and so on, step by step). And so it was a tremendous honour to support Williamson at the Wildways gig, the weekend before last. He was the man who got me started and I remain extremely grateful to him.

Williamson's music has always been strange, otherworldly and potent, often filled a kind of prophetic charge. With such a strong flavour it's something to be savoured, like a fine whisky. Now approaching his seventies, the power of his music hasn't diminished. I took home a vinyl copy of his latest album, Love Will Remain, complete with a gatefold booklet of his paintings. The whole package is a beautiful meditation on a life, richly lived. It's an album about memory and about love.

Like The Penny Whistle Book, it is profoundly wise and I could quote from it at length: Williamson still has much to impart. Instead I shall just encourage you to buy it, and leave you with one short quote from the autobiographical 'A Road Wound Winding.'

'Music is a power which comes from the Eternal. Sometimes humans get to play it.

Sometimes they don't get in the way too much.

And the music gets through.'

Blowzabella day

Lovely audio diary from Paul James of Blowzabella, about the band's recent day of workshops and concerts in the Limousin, France. Listen out for some gorgeous playing in the background, rhythmic and lyrical.