I was reminded just yesterday by Mr. London Street in his rather wonderful blog of a long-lost world once inhabited by me, and of the path I took which resulted in music being an important part of my life. Here is a link to that blog entry, and here is what it reminded me of...
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My early flirtations with the world of music ended badly. My willingness to spend thirty minutes hiding in a cupboard in order to avoid my music teacher did not bode well for my career as a pianist. At thirteen, however, my brother handed me his electric guitar and sat down opposite me, arranging the fingers of my left hand in an approximation of an E-minor chord.
There had been guitar lessons available in my primary school; Mr. Kennedy used to teach a class of four or five on Wednesday evenings and, this being Ireland, they would be wheeled out to accompany religious sing-songery, which they did with consummate smugness. To this carry-on, my levels of indifference were almost supernatural. What I was holding, though, that afternoon with my brother, was something altogether unrelated. This was a shiny, black Fender Lead II, with knobs and pickups and I could turn it up as loud as I wanted to.
As an adult, I recognize something of the obsessive in my teenage self. Socially speaking, I was a disaster. I was self absorbed, surly and withdrawn, generally disinterested in my peers. They repaid my disdain in kind. My evenings were spent sitting on the edge of an armchair, lifting the arm of my record player, placing the needle in the right groove on the spinning black vinyl. Sitting alone in a room, still wearing school uniform, bending light steel wires: rewind, listen, repeat. I would let the room grow dark around me, lit by the carbide glow from the streetlights outside my parents’ house.
Around age seventeen or so, my interest swung towards the acoustic guitar. I began to love the feel of the vibrating wood, the sensitivity that could be extracted from bronze strings by my fingertips. I would practice in front of a mirror watching my hands move, developing an admiration for the elegance of difficult chord shapes and patterns.
During my final year in school, a girl began to show an interest in me. She was small, pale and delicate with unusual, arresting features; maybe not beautiful, but with the kind of face that you might catch yourself staring at on a train. She was interested, she let me kiss her, and then, in the manner of teenage girls, she wasn't interested any more. I was devastated. Something in my gut decided this was a catastrophe, and that something was a physical, knotted presence for weeks.
One evening, after school, I dug up a vinyl copy of Inside Out by John Martyn from the pile of my brother's LP's. Lift the arm, needle in the groove. Last song, side two: So Much in Love with You.
I remember that song, the whole moment, clearly; the sound of the master tape coming up to speed at the beginning of the track, Martyn’s stumbling, yawning vocal, at times brittle and fracturing, at times a roar of frustration; Danny Thompson’s double bass with its nonchalant, sauntering counterpoint; Steve Winwood’s piano cadence like an absent-minded ellipsis.
I decided to learn to play and write.
And write I did. Awful, angst-ridden, introspective stuff at first, until life became more textured. I started going to songwriters’ nights where I met earnest, intense people who sang lyrics that were sometimes profound, often ill-considered and occasionally just bizarre.
There were individuals who would strap on their guitars and smile beatifically, raising their eyes to the rafters before unleashing torrents of ineffable crap. There was a gentleman called Ernie who each week would produce the most magnificent guitars, hand-crafted beauties all of them. Ernie had a playing style that revolved around almost punching his instrument as if he were trying to beat the music out of it. He would regularly include a song rather magnificently entitled "You're Just a Prick in a Volvo".
There was a lawyer who wrote wonderful lyrics and would express frustration to any who would listen that he was known as a musical barrister, rather than a musician who practiced law. Another character would brutalise his own songs with a passion that would hold the attention of everyone in the room like a vice. A strange woman of a certain age in a kaftan and chiffon scarves would sing in eerie, reedy tones like a musical saw before coyly acknowledging the applause from the floor.
There was gold there too, though, in those pubs on the Southside of Dublin. Little bits of poignancy and soulfulness leaked through the dross. Once, I followed a skinny, young Damien Rice to the microphone and wished I hadn't bothered.
Most of the magic was supplied by a man called John who was in a different class to the rest of us. At the time, he worked in a bank on the Quays. In the evening, he’d go home and craft beautiful songs, suffused with lightness and depth, that you’d swear you’d heard before. On Tuesdays and Thursdays he’d deliver them in a voice made to be listened to late at night. John spotted something in my playing, and would invite me to sit in and play part of his set with him. He tolerated and encouraged me, though in truth, I was pretty poor.
And then, one day, I wasn’t. I had written a new song, putting the finishing touches to it on the train, and decided to try it out. I disappeared a little bit when I was singing. I finished the song and there was a roar. They were mostly songwriters themselves, undeniably over-supportive, but they whistled and applauded. I didn’t know what to do, so I sat down and finished my pint.
I often think of those characters, some ten, twelve years behind me. They were oddballs, but then again, so am I. It wasn’t about the playing, or even about the song; it was a kind of good-natured, non-invasive primal scream for the creative urbanite. I would beat myself up over a fluffed chord change or a forgotten lyric; they sounded as if they were making it up as they went along, and I'm pretty sure that at times, they were. I've no doubt that nearly all of them would have been prepared to die for their art; I just suspect they’d have drawn the line at doing a bit of practice. Those nights were like some through-the-looking-glass X-Factor, where the eccentrics take to the stage, sing badly for five minutes, then politely tell the judges to go fuck themselves.
Performance, by its nature, invites critique and criticism. The open-mic community wasn't a real audience, but one which offered what amounted, at least publicly, to unconditional support. For the most part, we had songs only a mother or or hobbyist songwriter could love, and every week we would sing them for one another. I still perform, and every so often I disappear again.
Songwriting gives me a certain self-awareness, a perspective that allows the ability to be bemused by my own folly. I still practice and I still write, sitting with pen and paper and the occasional bottle of whiskey, hunched over my guitar, letting the room grow dark as the carbide glare from the street light outside my window is caught in the raindrops and speckles the glass with points of orange-yellow light.
