Burns Night

Our fondness for a wee dram and a party is one of the things which makes us Scottish so it’s no surprise that we like to celebrate one of our greatest poetic voices, Rabbie Burns.

Burns was many things to many people; poet, lyricist, farmer, womanizer…The Bard is probably the most apt title for the man. His poetry, even the stuff he wrote in English, is wonderful. That goes without saying. Yet on days such a these, where we celebrate the man’s brilliant canon of work and his literary genius we really should remember how vital he was to the Scots vernacular, because without him the Scots language would have died. Granted, he wrote a great deal in English too, but the importance of his work in Scots, even the “light-Scots” stuff, shouldn’t be overlooked.

In order to really got to the root of why Burns is lauded one has to go back a few years, back as far as James VI of Scotland or later James I of Great Britain. After the Union of the Crowns in 1603 Scots was held as being the sister language to English, however in the years that followed written Scots had almost vanished completely. Although court poets from the time like Montgomerie and Scott wrote in Scots, and there is evidence which suggests that even when James VI did become the King of Great Britain that he still spoke in Scots, as the English influence in literature and language started to spread Northwards the language started to take a bit of a beating.

Linguistically Scots had and still has many different characteristics which allowed it to be differentiated from English in many ways. Over time, as English started to become more wide spread across Scotland, the vernacular was eventually filtered out of our writing. Indeed, Scots eventually became the language of the working class and of rural communities.

Burns changed all of that because when he came around by and large, Scots was effectively dead. If it wasn’t for Burns there’s a pretty decent chance that the Scots which exists in different parts of Scotland simply wouldn’t exist.

Although Burns is well know for his Scots language poetry it’s easy for one to overlook how he played with the Scots vernacular in his verse. Many look back on Burns now and think nothing of the fact his work is in Scots; we know it no other way. Yet without his poetry there would be very little Scottish language to speak of.

His poetry is about more than just the Romanticism we know it for; it’s about the exploration of a language which was slowly dying and he, along with a few other poets from the era, brought it back, demonstrating that it’s a colourful, vibrant and above all relevant creative force.

Which was ironic really. Pre-reformation, medieval and renaissance Scottish literature is markedly different from what was happening in England, France and Italy in the same period. Aside from being linguistically different, it was a whole different beast thematically and the language really played a huge part in making it that way. Yet between the renaissance and the 18th century there’s a massive black hole in the canon of Scottish literature. Our language was part of the driving force behind our creative pursuits but it seems that no one of note really crafted anything of great literary merit between the Union and Burns.

Burns brought Scots back to life.

So when you remember Burns on this January night remember that he wa more than just a hugely gifted master poet, a brilliant lyricist and an important songwriter – he breathed life into a dying language. If you’ve ever spoken in slang, met anyone who has, seen a TV show or a film which in which anyone speaks in Scots, read Hugh MacDiarmid, Tom Leonard, James Kelman or Irvine Welsh remember that without Burns none of it would exist.

Oh and one more thing; poetry is meant to be read aloud. When you see a Burns poem today don’t just read it to yourself in silence, read it aloud. Perform it. Poetry is, and always will be, about performance. Burns knew it, and I’m sure he’d love it if you read one of his aloud. One should embrace not only the sentiment behind his work but the language of it too. I’m sure he’d appreciate that even more.

Below you will find “The Fornicator”. I probably don’t need to explain what it’s about. Enjoy and have a great Burns night.

The Fornicator. A New Song
by Robert Burns

Ye jovial boys who love the joys,
The blissful joys of lovers;
Yet dare avow with dauntless brow,
when th’ bonie lass discovers;
I pray draw near and lend an ear,
and welcome in a frater,
For I’ve lately been on quarantine,
A proven Fornicator.

Before the congregation wide
I pass’d the muster fairly,
My handsome Betsey by my side,
We gat our ditty rarely;
But my downcast eye by chance did spy
What made my lips to water,
Those limbs so clean where I, between,
Commenc’d a Fornicator.

With rueful face and signs of grace
I pay’d the buttock-hire,
The night was dark and thro’ the park
I could not by convoy her;
A parting kiss, what could I less,
My vows began to scatter,
My Betsey fell – lal de dal lal lal,
I am a Fornicator.

But for her sake this vow I make,
And solemnly I swear it,
That while I own a single crown,
She’s welcome for to share it;
And my roguish boy his mother’s joy,
And the darling of his pater,
For him I boast my pains and cost,
Although a Fornicator.

Ye wenching blades whose hireling jades,
Have tipt you off blue-boram,
I tell ye plain, I do distain
To rank you in the quorum;
But a bonie lass upon the grass
To teach her esse mater;
And no reward but for regard,
O that’s a Fornicator.

Your warlike kings and heroes bold,
Great captains and commanders;
Your mighty Cesars fam’d of old,
And conquering Alexanders;
In fields they fought and laurels bought
And bulwarks strong did batter,
And still they grac’d our noble list
And ranked Fornicator!

The Wind Makes this Old House Sing

The wind makes this old house creek.
Where Victorian walls meet modern windows
the wind makes this old house sing.

The gale force breeze
forces its way through the cracks
so hard that your breath starts to freeze

and the wind makes this old house creek.

When these walls talk
they never shut up.

The wind brings this old house to life,
old wooden floors and new plastic doors
converse with each other in frozen language;

when these walls talk
it’s all you can hear.

Day Three Hundred and Sixty Five: Insert Sinatra Related My Way Pun Here

As I write this I’ve no idea what I’m going to post for the second last day of 2011, all I know is what I want to say on the final day of 2011.

I decided to take part in this one a day posting challenge in order to increase my creative output and I think it’s worked quite well. Despite all the ruminations on how to play the blogging game and the occasional whine about readers, I knew what I was writing was never going to set the world alight. Really, how could it? I’m 26 years old and as far as I’m concerned I’m still learning a lot about the creative process. My writing improves on a daily basis and the only reason I can say that is because of this blog. Perhaps one day I’ll write something truly great, something worthy of critical appreciation or perhaps I won’t, either way it doesn’t matter. I’ve obtained a greater sense of enjoyment through writing for this blog and that’s been invaluable.

Let’s get personal. Before I started the project a lot of what I was writing was driven almost exclusively by existential angst. I was in a dark place, and the only way I felt I could make sense of this meaningless existence was to leave my mark on the world. Not just on my close friends and family but wider than that; to be remembered for something. By writing every day, I thought, it meant I could finally craft the speck of talent I had for writing into something powerful, useful and remarkable.

That’s changed.

Writing has always come naturally to me. When I cleaned out my Mum’s loft earlier on this year the report cards that we found which were from my primary school years spoke highly of my writing ability. It seemed that those teachers thought that my skills were beyond that of my classmates and that my mathematics skills were stunningly average. The latter hasn’t changed, but has the former? I’m loath to say that I’m a good writer, or even a better writer than the average person but I do get immense enjoyment from both writing.

Having spent Christmas with my family, my Gran and my Mum were eager to tell Jennifer of how I used to be able to name the make and model of every single car I could see in the street. They said this was because I used to read Auto-Mart constantly as a child. Apparently there are even a few photos floating around of me sitting reading the newspaper when I was two years old.

So perhaps the ease I feel I have at expressing myself through writing comes directly from that. Who knows.

I suppose I’m getting away from the point a little here. I’ve struggled to feel as though I’m a competent musician from the moment I picked up a guitar on my 17^th birthday. Writing lyrics was easy, writing music was hard. I neglected writing for a while, dallying with nonsense poetry and rubbish prose. Perhaps somewhat fortuitously, starting university, studying literature and my band breaking up all happened around about the same time in 2010. When I heard a friend was going to do a one a day blogging project (he didn’t see it through) I thought I’d do something similar to not only enhance my writing but to perhaps also apply the knowledge of literature I had begun to learn in university in a practical way.

The stars seemed to align, as it were.

Over at the Daily Post, they’ve asked us to look back at our blogs and to reflect on our blogging in 2011. The first question is why did you started the post a day/week challenge? so I think I’ve just answered that pretty comprehensively above.

The second is Describe the state of your blog the time your started the challenge? well, when I started the challenge I had two blogs, one for creative writing and one for more critical, journalistic writing. I binned the latter and dumped everything into the this one. Before that, Brain Echo was simply a creative echo, a collection of rubbish creative writing (bar the odd decent flash fiction/fragment). That actually ties quite nicely into question three, “how did your blog evolve over the course of the year?” Well it had a bit everything, really. I started with a schedule in mind but I never really followed through. It just became a mash of fiction, poetry, articles, mixtapes and the odd video or two. It seems this blogging strategy worked well for me, although it may not have necessarily have done so for the readers of this blog…

Did I post as often as I’d hoped? Well, given that I’m on the final day I’d say yes. Well, that’s a lie. I didn’t post as often as I’d hoped because recently I’ve had no internet connection, thus making it difficult to actually post something. I missed two or three days but it couldn’t be helped.

I probably wouldn’t do anything differently if I started again, purely because this blog has been a voyage of discovery, a way for me to push my own creative boundaries. In that sense it’s taken me places that I’d never thought I’d go.

The thing I’m most proud of accomplishing this year is almost certainly having some poetry published in From Glasgow to Saturn. Without the drive this blog has given me, it wouldn’t have happened.

Now here’s the question I really wanted to answer: what surprised you about the challenge? The difficulty of it. Challenge is definitely the correct term. Although I’ve already said that writing seems to come naturally to me, there’s still an immense amount of work involved in creative writing. Rarely does an idea hit the page fully formed. Editing and redrafting are definitely the aim of the game.

On a similar note, the study of literature is very much about the dissection of books, their themes and their impact on society. When I was in school I used to think that we were looking too much into books, and that all the imagery, metaphors and deep textual analysis was essentially just trying to find something that wasn’t really intended to be there by the author. However, when I started studying literature it dawned on me that many authors and poets actually do intend to layer their work with meaning. Yet, this opinion changed again when I started studying creative writing. Most authors take care of plot and characters first before adding in that extra layer. In fact, it appears that a lot of that extra layer stuff is added subconsciously by many authors.

It seems that a little of both is involved; on one hand the author sometimes intends to imbue their work with many layers and sometimes they just do it subconsciously. That’s really what makes textual analysis of novels and poems so exciting.

The hardest part of writing for me was doing that. Many people can write pretty words, but it’s very hard to write pretty words with multiple meanings or with fantastic imagery and that works on different levels. I’m not sure I’ve succeeded yet, nevertheless when I’m writing I tend to keep these things in mind.

Creative writing is not an easy thing to do and you have to work very hard to be any good at it. No one just spits out genius on the page, not even the absolute greats. So perhaps, above all, that’s what this blog has taught me the most – even if it is hard work, as long as you enjoy it, the effort is worth it in the end.

What advice would I give to bloggers who want to blog regularly? Have a theme in mind or a goal, but don’t beat yourself up if you go off topic or stray from the path towards that goal. I’d also so say just do it. When you make the commitment make sure you’re entirely aware of what it entails because a lot of the time you might be too exhausted to post. If that ever happens, post about it. Just write every day. It helps, trust me.

Truth be told, I never really did play the blogging game in the end. Between uni, work and creativity the only blogs I came across are the ones who came across me first. If you’re following me and you’re reading this, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to read whatever I had to say. I didn’t start this in order to have a legion of regular readers however the fact I have just a few really is tremendous and I sincerely hope you’ve enjoyed it. My gratitude to you guys is eternal.

For 2012 I’m going to blog less, maybe only once or twice a week. Instead what I hope to do is focus on writing a whole lot more. You place a great deal of pressure on  yourself when you’ve agreed to blog every day for a year, often meaning that you’ll end up posting things which could use a little more work just so that you have content for that day. That’s what I’m looking forward to the most; the pressure of having to post something but without the daily timeframe. More editing, more redrafting and more writing for 2012 with the goal of creating work which surpasses anything I’ve done so far.

Oh dear, I seemed to have rambled now for nearly 1600 words. I’ll wrap this up then, shall I?

Personally 2011 has been a pretty poor year. For my closest friends, family and I this year has been pretty grim. Creatively it’s been great (with very little of the creative output focussing on the events going on around me) so hopefully it’ll get even better next year.

With every ounce of my being I thank you for reading this. I sincerely hope you’ve enjoyed reading my blog as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. Tonight, a chapter ends but the book is still being written. I hope you stick around in 2012.

Day Three Hundred and Sixty Four: Why Bother?

(This will eventually be published on Daily Dischord, so if it vanishes in a few days you know why!)

As 2011 draws to a close we find that many of our favourite music websites or magazines publish their end of year lists, vaguely detailing in less than 100 words per record why these albums deserve to be called the best of the year. It’s an interesting procedure, to distil the reasons one feels the way they do about a record into an orderly list. There’s something very clinical and calculating about it which is the contradicts everything music is about. We don’t experience music in a top 10 or top 20 lists. Even us reviewers find it hard to say anything of any real merit in less than a hundred words, so I’m asking why bother? I’m not sure we experience music in this way and here’s why.

At the start of November I was fortunate enough to persuade some person in some PR company to let me go see Rise Against, Polar Bear Club and Tom Morello for free. All I had to do in return was do a little write up about it and since that’s primarily what I do on this Daily Dischord, as well as being something I happen to enjoy, I was more than happy to oblige.

In many ways that concert summed up the reasons why I enjoy writing about music whilst paradoxically highlighting a few of the things which make writing about music difficult. The creation of rock music comes from a primal, emotional place, providing an experience which is difficult to convey in words. Similarly, the performance of music, even those which are highly choreographed, comes from that same place and by attending gigs we are expected to identify with what’s being felt on stage, usually because the band we’re saying create music which speaks to us in some way.

The best rock music is vitriolic and passionate, soaked in a miasma of emotions that resonates with the listener in a variety of ways. That’s what makes writing about rock music so difficult; be it a good album or a bad one, a great live performance or a shambles, we’re attempting to distil the cataclysm of feeling and intent into one space, trying our very best to articulate why we do or do not identify with what we’re hearing. As I’m sure you’re aware, the best write ups on records or concerts are ones which convey a nuanced sense of excitement about what the artist has tried to achieve with their performance, subsequently judging whether or not they were successful in getting that message across. Even a highly polished rock record has an energy about it which is unquantifiable and really quite unexplainable. Almost as if you can feel the electricity on the disc or music file leap off at you before you hit play. A good write up gives you just a hint at what kind of experience you’re missing out on. That’s why we music writers enjoy doing what we do. It’s a challenging thing but my god is it one we relish.

Rock n roll music and all of its exponents, from black metal to math rock and everything in between, is an all about an emotional connection. Some reviews articulate the importance of that connection pretty well and some of them don’t but all of them try.

This is what made the aforementioned Rise Against show an interesting experience for me. Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello is responsible for not only one of my favourite records of all time, but one of the most important records of all time and that rarest of things: a perfect debut album. Rise Against on the other hand, up until recently, were probably one of my favourite bands of all time, having released four records which really got me into punk music. Polar Bear Club have also just released one of my favourite records of 2011, a record which is filled with such pure melodic goodness that it demonstrates that one need not emulate Jimmy Eat World in order to craft brilliant earnest punk rock.

Three generations of music were represented that night, demonstrating just how important that emotional connection was to their legions of fans. After the show had finished, I realised that I’d lost that connection with Rise Against and truth be told, that was pretty sad thing no matter how inevitable it was going to be.

These days my tastes are squarely of the punk rock persuasion; very much a genre of music which is raggedy, shambolic, cathartic and often messy and directionless. It spits at you, it bleeds, it’s chaotic – it’s brilliant. Of course, mere words are not enough to express exactly what it is, but that’s about as close as I can get. You’d need to listen to the records to get an understanding about what it is.

So as the end of the year rolls around music publications of all shapes and forms start to compile and publish their end of year lists (or if you’re Q magazines you’ve probably just spent the past 12 months compiling magazines of lists about any number of things) and yet there is definitely is something undeniably scientific about this. Compiling a top 5, 10 or even a top 50 list is cold, analytical, and almost surgical. It demands a ranking of artistic quality in an empirical way. It is a process which is so restrained that it is the antithesis of everything rock music (in all forms) means.

Perhaps more fundamentally though, it is not the way we experience music. We do not experience music with a cold precision; it is an art form which kicks and screams at us. We experience music in an uncompromising way yet an end of year list tries to boil down a year’s worth of records into a couple of lines, giving us no sense of the passion or feelings of the individual who’s written it. No matter how well written the list is it tells us nothing about the way the writer has experienced the music they’ve categorised. The majority of us find music and experience it in a way which is important, impassioned and energetic. To attempt to quantify that any more than we have in reviews throughout the year is unnatural. We shouldn’t do it. So why do we feel we have to?

 

Day Three Hundred and Sixty Three: Our Dust

Our Dust

Every day a piece of ourselves is lost
when we move a little, shed a little, dust a little.

Dead cells tell a story;
our whole lives could be replayed in the dust that fell

to the floor when I was down cleaning on hands and knees,
and memories of the past came floating back.

From the fight in ’07, when the wind was howling outside,
I thought we’d never see the end of it until you held me close and sighed,

To the day you graduated in ’09, when we drank until we couldn’t see,
and fell home drunk, glad that the silly black flat hat signalled the end of your degree.

Or that time when you dropped the ashtray
and it shattered on the floor, causing the neighbour below

to bang on the ceiling, disturbing the dust some more.
The events of our lives are distributed amongst our possessions

with a fine layer of grey which chronicles the passage of time,
little bits of dust, fragments from a life before.

Dust is where we came from
Dust is what we become

Dust is perhaps where we belong.

Day Three Hundred and Sixty Two: Dice, Part IV

Gradually it dawned on Mr Ivins that the cough was not simply coming from one person but that much of the room were now coughing. Growing slightly anxious about this, Ivins decided to pack up his things and leave. Pushing back his chair to get out from underneath the table, the man behind him also stood up, turned round and coughed blood onto Mr Ivins suit before collapsing onto the floor, shaking violently. All around him people got out of their chairs to investigate, each one of them coughing with flecks of blood coming from their mouths and noses.

“I think this man needs a-“  Edward tried to call for help but then he too started coughing. All around him people started falling to the floor and Edward found that he was not only negotiating tables and chairs but also fallen bodies on his way to the exit. Finding it increasingly difficult to move, Edward attempted to cross the room to the door but failed to get very far. He felt his chest tightening up whilst he struggled to take a breath. Falling to his knees he caught a glimpse of the man in the black suit who had attracted his attention before. Bodies crumbled to the floor, people panicked and attempted to flee. People were falling over one another convulsing; some of them attempted to scream yet it was all in vain, screams replacing with frustrated gargling sounds. In the middle of it all was this man standing with the same morose look on his face, people now clawing at his legs as he advanced through the throng towards the exit. The identity of this man dawn on Edward as he released what his presence meant  and it became clear to him what he had to do.

With every single ounce of strength left his body, Edward pulled himself up, blood dripping from his mouth, attempting to control the convulsions that were threatening to pull his body back down to the floor. The man turned to look at Edward, shocked that he was able to stand given his condition. He looked around him and noticed that it was only he and Edward who standing in a cafeteria strewn with bodies. Edward launched himself at the man and pulled him to the ground, both men falling to the floor on a blanket of corpses. It took the man a moment or two to register this and by the time he had tried to fight Edward off, it was too late. Ivins was now singularly focused on one task – to kill this man, to stop him from committing such atrocities elsewhere. Using all of the remaining strength he could gather Edward wrestled with the man, fighting his way on top of him, screeching and clawing at him as he spat and coughed blood, bringing his hands around his neck and squeezing as tight as he could.

The man tried to fight back but to no avail. Despite his weakened state Edward seemed to have an almost supernatural strength, squeezing the man’s neck as hard as he could until his body slowly gave up fighting and his eyes rolled back into his head, a look of terror on his face Edward held on as long as he could, spluttering and squirming as he straddled the man’s now lifeless body. Eventually he gave into the convulsions and collapsed on top of him, keeping both hands around his neck.

As the light in his eyes faded, Mr Edward Ivins thought of his daughter and those dice cufflinks, eventually coming to realise that no plan in the world could ever have accounted for this. In a place where order and routine reigned supreme, at precisely 13.23pm on Wednesday April 20^th 2011 Mr Edward Ivins broke from his schedule to save the world on his lunch break. The world has never been the same since.

And so we reach the conclusion of Edward Ivins story. I enjoyed writing this, even if I have perhaps overwritten the end a little. I’m sure this’ll be sorted as I redraft it further. enjoy!