Bitter Boy
There was a boy, a bitter boy,
Whose golden heart I saw gleaming.
I thought I'd win the heart within,
But now I know that I was dreaming.
But I will rise, and I will sing,
Until I know I can't conceal it.
Because I hold the saddest song,
I wish to God I cannot feel it.
And then the boy, the bitter boy,
He came to me for rest and healing.
He reached in his chest, deep in his breast,
Held out the heart for me still gleaming.
But I will rise, and I will sing,
Until I know I can't conceal it.
Because I hold the saddest song,
I wish to God I cannot feel it.
And then the boy, me and the boy,
We walked for miles through stormy weather.
And hand in hand, we roamed the land,
And held the gleaming heart together.
But I will rise, and I will sing,
Until I know I can't conceal it.
Because I hold the saddest song,
I wish to God I cannot feel it.
Then the boy, the bitter boy,
He came to take the gleaming treasure.
He reached in my chest, deep in my breast,
And took the gleaming heart forever.
But I will rise, and I will sing,
Until the day I can't conceal it.
And then I'll sing the saddest song,
And wish to God you cannot hear it.
Oh, then I'll sing the saddest song,
I wish to God you cannot hear it.
Watch Kate Rusby sing Bitter Boy at the Cambridge Folk Festival on YouTube.
I was flicking through channels a few months ago and came across a broadcast showing the highlights of the 2007 Cambridge Folk Festival, and just as I was about to switch channels, they announced that Kate Rusby would be singing, so I stopped, put the remote down, and watched.
Then, as soon as the song (and the programme, for it was the last song shown), I got up, went to my computer and searched for the song - Bitter Boy - online.
Unfortunately, my usual music finding choice of Napster let me down on this occasion, but YouTube provided where Napster failed, and let me listen to the song a few more times, and make sense of the expressions on the faces of the performers.
I knew enough about Kate Rusby to know that she performed with her husband, John McCusker, but what I didn't know was that they'd since divorced and the truly bittersweet beauty of the song was amplified.
It's a sad fact of life that relationships end, and when they do, they often don't end neatly. It's not like cutting a ribbon - and nor should it be.
I used to say that I didn't want to get married because that would only add to the pain and suffering when the relationship finally came to an end. "It's painful enough, why get lawyers involved" I'd say. I think I believed it too.
When I was a little girl, I was never one of these girls who imagined her perfect wedding, but I just presumed that at some point I'd meet someone I liked, loved and wanted to spend my life with, and that we'd get married and have children, and follow the conventional path to old age, grandchildren and so on.
Then things changed. My parents separated and got divorced, rocking the foundations of my assumptions about life, and pulling the rug of happy childhood memories out from under my feet. Then, at 22, I was diagnosed with a genetic condition with a 50% likelihood of passing it on to any children.
The combination of things resulted in a serious crack in my self esteem - how on earth could I, certified imperfect and broken, ever hope to have a lasting relationship, and what was the point of getting married anyway, when it was going to have to end - if not because of any fault of mine, but to give my partner the chance to have biological children of his own with someone who wasn't going to (potentially) cause them to be as broken as I was.
The cruel tricks of school bullies had also left me with a deep distrust of any professed attraction to me, and the majority of my early relationships (such as they were) were carried out more in a sense of curiosity about what the fuss was all about rather than genuine passion or attraction.
Then, against all the odds, I fell in love at first sight.
To my amazement, there seemed to be reciprocation, but things were, as they say, complicated.
I made my choice - him - and broke someone's heart in the process. His choice was made for him and rather than being his first choice, I was the one who was there - real - and, in my head, unable to compete with the fantasy that could never be brought to earth by the vagaries of domesticity and familiarity.
Things progressed, but no matter what happened, I was just waiting for the day when it would end - none of which prepared me for when it actually happened, or for what happened in the aftermath.
There was a boy, a bitter boy,
Whose golden hair I saw gleaming.
I thought I'd won the heart within,
But now I know that I was dreaming.
But I did rise, and I did sing,
Although it burned me to conceal it.
Because, I held the saddest song,
and wished to God, I could not feel it.
Some songs are just never meant to be sung.
Streets of London
Music and Lyrics by Ralph McTell
Have you seen the old man
In the closed-down market
Kicking up the paper,
with his worn out shoes?
In his eyes you see no pride
And held loosely at his side
Yesterday's paper telling yesterday's news
So how can you tell me you're lonely,
And say for you that the sun don't shine?
Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London
I'll show you something to make you change your mind
Have you seen the old girl
Who walks the streets of London
Dirt in her hair and her clothes in rags?
She's no time for talking,
She just keeps right on walking
Carrying her home in two carrier bags.
In the all night cafe
At a quarter past eleven,
Same old man is sitting there on his own
Looking at the world
Over the rim of his tea-cup,
Each tea last an hour
Then he wanders home alone
And have you seen the old man
Outside the seaman's mission
Memory fading with
The medal ribbons that he wears.
In our winter city,
The rain cries a little pity
For one more forgotten hero
And a world that doesn't care
Listen to Sinead O'Connor's cover version on YouTube.
I had a bit of a strange early childhood, musically.
I don't remember listening to a lot of pop music, and I certainly didn't have many tapes or records. Most of the music in the house was classical, or my dad's big band stuff.
One of my earliest memories of playing music was a tape by Mary O'Hara, an Irish harpist and singer. I think it was the album "Tranquility", but it's difficult to tell because it's out of print now, and there's not much about it on the interwebs.
It was on that album that I first heard the song "Streets of London", and I'm fairly certain that's where the seeds of my fascination with London as a city started.
I think I played that tape to death, and I would sing along, my head filling with ideas of London as the Mean City, where the pavements were paved with gold, but the gutters were filled with the ashes of those who tried and failed.
The older I grew, the more convinced I was that London was this big scary place, but then I'd read about hidden places, disused tube stations. I saw, and read, Neverwhere, and my fascination only grew, and like a moth to a flame, I found myself actually here, walking those same streets of London.
It's a heartbreaking song, and I've seen them all - and more - in my time here, but for all it's a hard and cruel place, it's also, at least, in my experience, a vibrant and exciting place to be.
One day I'll have had my fill of it I'm sure, but not now, not yet.
The Blower's Daughter
And so it is just like you said it would be
Life goes easy on me
most of the time
And so it is the shorter story
No love, no glory
No hero in her sky
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes...
And so it is just like you said it should be
We'll both forget the breeze
Most of the time
And so it is the colder water
The Blower's Daughter
The pupil in denial
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes off you
I can't take my eyes...
Did I say that I loathe you?
Did I say that I want to
Leave it all behind?
I can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind off you
I can't take my mind off of you
I can't take my mind off you
I can't take my mind off you
I can't take my mind...
my mind...my mind...
'Til I find somebody new
View the video for The Blower's Daughter at YouTube.
Some time in 2005, I went to see the film Closer, starring Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Clive Owen and Natalie Portman.
I'd heard good things about it, liked the cast, and thought it might be a pleasant way to pass some time.
I finally went to see it in Reading, I think.
I was in love. That truly, madly, deeply kind of love that utterly blinds you to the possibility that everything is not all wine and roses.
He was captivating. Utterly charming, with a devilish twinkle in his eye. He was trouble with a capital T.
He was, for a time, exactly what I needed, and wanted, and then, somehow, he changed.
I don't know exactly when it happened, but I know the moment I realised that our relationship was ultimately doomed.
It was in a cinema in Reading, I think. Watching Closer. Near the end of the film, as Damien Rice starts to sing The Blower's Daughter.
I don't know where it came from. I don't know exactly what in the film, or the music sparked it off, but a great sadness welled up inside of me, and I sobbed.
I sobbed my heart out in the cinema.
Silently.
My chest ached with the effort of not howling the place down.
He asked what was wrong.
I lied, and said the film was sad, which it is, but not that sad.
I knew we were doomed, but I kept hoping I was wrong.
I wasn't.
I should have walked away.
I didn't.
Couldn't.
In the end, a long while later, the decision made itself, but not before it took a good chunk out of me.
I still can't listen to this song without a lump forming in my throat.
I'm Gonna Do It All
Words: Karine Polwart (Bay Songs Ltd)
Music: Karine Polwart (Bay Songs Ltd) & Steven Polwart (MCPS/PRS)
I'm gonna sail right out on the Atlantic
I'm gonna catch me a fish that's bigger than gigantic
I'm gonna cook up a fine fish tea
It will be like some kind of Galilee
I'm gonna do it all some day
CHORUS
I'm gonna do it all some day
I'm gonna do it all some day
You may not believe a word I say
But I tell you I'm gonna do it all some day
I'm gonna climb way over that old mountain
I'm gonna shout in a place where no-one hears me shouting
I'm gonna swear so loud
I'll strip the silver lining from a cloud
I'm gonna do it all some day
I'm gonna fly in a silver winged space rocket
I'm gonna pick out the stars and put them in my pocket
I'm gonna bring those stars back down
So I can spread celestial light around
I'm gonna do it all some day
Listen to an excerpt of I'm Gonna Do It All
I went on a bit of a folk kick in 2007. I can't remember exactly what started it. It might have been Seth Lakeman, but after a bit of clicking around and random downloading from Napster, I happened across the work of Karine Polwart, and downloaded the album Scribbled in Chalk.
It's not your ordinary folk album, with songs about human trafficking and a haunting ballad which commemorates Scots missionary Jane Haining, who died in Auschwitz with many of the children from the Jewish orphanage she ran in Budapest in the 1930s.
It's not all misery either. Even the songs about difficult subjects are ultimately uplifting, and it's one of the albums I listened to most in 2007. In fact, according to my last.fm profile, she's the artist I listened to most, by quite a way.
Apparently I'm Gonna Do It All has become a bit of an anthem in Scotland, with Cockburnspath Primary School in Berwickshire making it their school anthem. They're not the only school either - Castlefield Primary School, in my home town has also made it their anthem, with the schoolkids amending it to suit their ambitions, and even going as far as to record it.
For me though, it's been my quiet anthem over the latter half of 2007, reminding me, when things got tough, that I do have ambitions, and that no matter how difficult things get, or how impossible they seem, anything is possible if you're prepared to work hard enough for it.
I've got plans, and I've got a new year stretching ahead of me in which to give it my best shot, and you know what?
I really am gonna do it all, some day.
I was watching Celebrity Mastermind the other day, and was reminded of the book 31 Songs by Nick Hornby, a book I've not read, but have seen a few times now, and never actually picked up.
The book contains (strangely enough) essays on 31 songs that have particular resonance for him, and when I went to the Wikipedia Entry for 31 Songs to read more about it, I found out that the proceeds went to the TreeHouse Trust, a charity which operates a school which specialises in educating autistic children, and which his son attends.
So in January, I plan to write about my own 31 songs, one a day, and at the end of January, I'll make a donation to TreeHouse - a pound for each entry I write.
If you like what you read, I hope you'll consider following suit, and make a donation to TreeHouse too.
... the online home and (not very) alter(ed)-ego of Ann McMeekin, a recently freelance Web Accessibility Consultant.
... passionate about many things, most of which will turn up on this site at some time or other.
... contactable via email.
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