Report, Report, Tribute, Report...

Report, Report, Tribute, Report...

1.

Report 1

Yes - thank you for asking - doing very well now.

As all the world knows...  I do not do Stiff Upper Lip.  So, be glad you were not around.

Here in Yorkshire I have quietly recovered from eye surgery x 2.  Turns out I have two eyes.

Reached the stage where I take the new eyes to the optician, to find  out what they can do.

Reading glasses - what a marvellous invention...

 

2.

Report 2

The first book read with the new eyes and the new glasses was...

Bew, Paul. 2016. Churchill and Ireland. Oxford University Press.

Not part of any great plan.  That book just happened to be on top of the waiting pile of books.

It is there because Paul Bew's book is much cited in other works recently read - for example in Between Two Hells: The Irish Civil War, by Diarmaid Ferriter, 2021. 

And Paul Bew has paused, to add a footnote to his own book, at the bottom of a fairly recent posting, September 4, 2023, on the Churchill Society web site...

https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-197/churchill-and-ireland-revisited/

'Confession

I have here a confession to make. I think now I should have openly stated at the start of my book Churchill and Ireland (Oxford, 2016) that both my parents, one a Belfast Protestant and the other a Cork Catholic, were members of Churchill’s army in the Second World War. They were both doctors—my father, Dr. Kenneth Bew, a lieutenant in the RAF and my mother, Captain Mary “Paddy” Leahy in the Indian Medical Service, which was then an integral part of the British army and something of an Irish fiefdom.  This is why I quite like the underlying concept of Churchill’s draft 1934 film script for movie mogul Alexander Korda, that the mixed-marriage tensions of an Irish-Catholic/Protestant couple might be dissipated by a decision to join the British army.

More profoundly, as the decision of both my Irish parents to support the British war effort was the sine qua non of my existence, I have never been able to suppress my lack of enthusiasm for Irish neutrality in the war against Hitler. Perhaps as a consequence I have never been able to admire the policy of Irish neutrality. I can accept, of course, that, given the historic legacy of Anglo-Irish bitterness and tension, it may well have been politically impossible to bring Ireland into the war against the Nazis, even after the Americans joined in...'

Paul Bew's 'Confession' is interesting and important - and these issues I have explored in depth elsewhere.  But I am not sure that it adds much to the robust and readable book that is Bew, Churchill and Ireland...  It certainly does not detract from it.

(His note does add to the long list of novels and dramas about the archipelagic experience that find resolution in mystic marriage...)

 

3.

Tribute to Patrick Maume...

What strikes me now, about Bew, Churchill and Ireland, is the Dedication...

'To Patrick Maume

who has revolutionized the art of Irish biography'

And Paul Bew's Acknowledgements, p vii, begins, 'I owe a very great debt to Patrick Maume...'  his 'scholarly sympathy for all shades of Irish life...'  'his wise conversation...'

We can quarrel with terms.  The art of Irish biography.  The science of Irish biography.  The traditions of Irish biography.

Our traditions can be combative, in complex ways.  It is rare for a writer to write a biography of someone they despise, and to understand our traditions we need first of all to understand the uses of hagiography.  And then, let combat commence.  But I have said enough about that elsewhere.

Our thanks  to Paul Bew for giving us this tribute to the work of Patrick Maume.  

Patrick Maume's approach is, indeed, scholarly, patient, kindly, non-judgemental.  But is not afraid to make...  assessments.  His approach is not insular - Patrick Maume's knowledge of networks within Ireland is extraordinary, of family, friendships and enmities, influences.  But he is always aware that these networks stretch beyond Ireland - there is always, as we say nowadays, a diasporic dimension.  And Patrick Maume shares his extraordinary knowledge in patient and kindly ways.

As Paul Bew says, we can now follow Patrick Maume's work for the online Dictionary Of Irish Biography...

https://www.ria.ie/research-programmes/dictionary-of-irish-biography/

 

4.

Report 3

I particularly remember one of my encounters with that distinctive Patrick Maume voice - my reading of his book...

Maume, Patrick. 1993. “‘Life That Is Exile’”: Daniel Corkery and the Search for Irish Ireland. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, The Queen’s University of Belfast.

I thought then, this is different, this is calm, this is helpful...

I read that book as part of my presentation on the notion of 'Hidden Ireland', a notion now enshrined in many titles - notably, in interdisciplinary dialogue, by Bob Scally and Charles Orser...

Scally, Robert James. 1995. The End of Hidden Ireland: Rebellion, Famine, and Emigration. New York: Oxford University Press.

Orser, Charles. 2006. Unearthing Hidden Ireland: Historical Archaeology and Anthropology at Ballykilcline, County Roscommon. Bray: Wordwell.

But I particularly valued Patrick Maume's approach to Corkery, because I wanted to follow Corkery into a study of Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin / Owen Roe O'Sullivan...

And that one poem, whose title has not settled down...  The poet asks the blacksmith to make him a spade.

The Irish language specialists use the first line of the poem - and speak, and write, of it as “A Shéamais, déan dom” (‘Seamus, make for me’)...

Seamus Heaney's version is called 'Poet to Blacksmith' - Heaney is, of course, aware of the text's complexities, and signals that.  But he dials it down, and Ola Larsmo, for the Nobel Prize Committee, dials it down even further...

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1995/heaney/article/

My approach dials it up.  

That poem by Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin is one of the most extraordinary and dense pieces of writing in world history.  A while back, during the lockdowns, I began to write up my notes on that one text.  When my notes reached 20 pages, I decided to put them aside...

Patrick O'Sullivan

November 2024

 

Homework: Radical Approaches Reading Group, 2020

This is one of those What We Did During the Lockdowns notes.  Worth sharing now - because there are links with current projects....

Notes January 2021

Radical Approaches Reading Group, led by Lola Olufemi

I track the work of the Poetry Translation Centre because I am interested in translation - and the importance of translation in our world, in the past and today.

I have gone on about this elsewhere, but briefly... 

The Poetry Translation Centre has helped me to clarify my thinking about translation, interpretation, textualization, transcription, reading/writing, literacy/orality, poetry/lyric/song, all of which I regard as parts of that continuum of processes to do with the arts of the word.  See, for example, the work of Susan Bassnett and Maria Tymoczko.

I have never been able to coincide with PTC meetings in London.  In the crisis year 2020, as events moved online, I said to myself that I would try to become involved with Poetry Translation Centre online events, as they appeared.

When the Radical Approaches Reading Group, led by Lola Olufemi, was advertised by the Poetry Translation Centre I signed up at once.  I am not sure that I understand how this Reading Group fits in within PTC policies.  I can report that the Reading Group did everything that I wanted.  It was a great help, as I developed - in isolation, during the Covid crisis - some of my own thinking, on the issues covered by the Reading Group...

We were asked to read 6 texts.  Some of these texts were already known to me, some were new to me.  Presumably the texts were chosen by Lola.  I have no quarrel with the choice of texts.  Someone who knows more than I do - about the literature, the debates, the discourse - had to make decisions.

There is a straightforward translation aspect to the 6 texts - since many of them were originally written and published outside the English language.

There follows some of my notes on my experience of the Reading Group and my experience of the texts.  I am going to keep this write-up simple and schematic. 

So, to each text I give 2 brief notes...  1.  one positive comment, 2. one negative comment...

Week 1 - October 4 2020

Wretched of the Earth - Frantz Fanon

First published 1962.  My generation was very influenced by Sartre (and etc...) - which I still think was a Good Thing.  So we well know Sartre's Introduction to Wretched of the Earth...

John Drabinski's article on Fanon in Stanford EP is good...

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/frantz-fanon/

1.  Fanon's observations about ways in which a group, or a person, absorbs negative observations.  

Examples, the long term influence of Fanon - mention Glen Coulthard's Red Skin, White Masks (2014) and Hamid Dabashi's Brown Skin, White Masks (2011), the similar-yet-different forms of colonial experience in indigenous North America (Coulthard) and the Middle East (Dabashi).  I have just been reading a book about psychiatry in South Africa - Fanon critique built in.

I commissioned and published a chapter on Fanon and Irish experience...

Greenslade, Liam. 1992. "White Skins, White Masks: Psychological Distress among the Irish in Britain." In The Irish in the New Communities, edited by Patrick O'Sullivan, 2:201-25. The Irish World Wide. London & Washington: Leicester University Press.

2. The problem of violence, as violence is in effect encouraged by Fanon.

There is now a huge background literature on this.  And we have to negotiate the arguments - about manly self-respect, indication of non-consent, the blood of martyrs.

Eventually you will find yourself in a room with someone who is justifying the murder of children.

Week 2 - October 18 2020

Decolonisation is not a Metaphor - K Wayne Yang, Eve Tuck

1.  Great title.  First published 2012, in Volume I, Number 1 of the journal Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society.   And really got up and running that journal, Decolonization:  Indigeneity, Education & Society - and since then that journal has been ploughing an interesting, and important, if lonely, furrow, the personal experiences of young academics from 'indigenous' and minority backgrounds.

2.  I have followed further the work of Tuck and of Yang.  The 2012 article leaves up in the air the question of the ownership of land.  I see no attempt to take that further - to look at countries and communities where there HAS been redistribution of land.  For example, Ireland.  With obvious dangers.  Like, we might, yet again, create a small farmer peasantry, tied to the land.  'Decolonisation' might not be a Metaphor - I suspect that here 'Land' is a Metaphor.

See...

https://www.aqs.org.uk/land-questions-in-the-21st-century-postcolony/

Week 3 - November 1 2020

A Small Place - Jamaica Kincaid

First published 1988

1. I know Jamaica Kincaid's work - she was a regular staff writer for New Yorker magazine.  Very good writer - but very much in that New Yorker style.  A style which, of course, she helped shape.

The only one of the 6 texts that you could say was a good piece of writing.  You could use this text to teach writing.  Some wonderful, confident effects.

2.  I did offer some thoughts about the problems Jamaica Kincaid gave me - speaking as an Incredibly Unattractive, Fat, Pastrylike-Fleshed Man.

See...

Frederick, Rhonda D. 2003. "What If You're an 'Incredibly Unattractive, Fat, Pastrylike-Fleshed Man'?: Teaching Jamaica Kincaid's 'A Small Place.'"

College Literature 30 (3): 1-18. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25112735.

In another part of my working life I am in touch with Evelyn O'Callaghan of the University of the West Indies.  Evelyn and her colleagues have just produced

O'Callaghan, Evelyn, and Tim Watson. 2021. Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1800-1920. Caribbean Literature in Transition. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Dalleo, Raphael, and Curdella Forbes. 2021. Caribbean Literature in Transition, 1920-1970. Caribbean Literature in Transition. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Two fat volumes.  Jamaica Kincaid mentioned once.  Briefly.

So, has Jamaica Kincaid simply become a Returned Yank?

Week 4 - November 15 2020

Coloniality of Gender / Toward a decolonial feminism - Maria Lugones

First published 2010

1.  This was the text that gave most trouble to our reading group.  I am used to reading this sort of material - as I say, my generation, Sartre, influence.  I had to go away and read more Maria Lugones before coming back to this particular text - which I now see as part of her struggle with and within a certain strand of male-dominated Latin American anti-colonial theory - and its 'indifference' to violence against women.  See...

Lugones, Maria. 2016. "The Coloniality of Gender." In The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Development Critical Engagements in Feminist Theory and Practice, edited by Wendy Harcourt, 13-33. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

2. The level of abstraction within this particular text becomes absurd.

Abstract nouns are unpacked by means of a sequence of further abstract nouns.  Some of those abstract nouns I have problems with - portmanteau packages with which I do not agree.  But, I am reminded of a moment in Mary O'Brien's  book...

O'Brien, M. 1981. The Politics of Reproduction. Routledge & Kegan Paul.

...where she pauses to explain why feminists must master and use elite abstract thought.

 

Week 5 - November 29 2020

Decolonising Methodologies - Linda Tuhiwai Smith

First published 1999.  The copy I have is the second edition 2012.

1.  The first part of this book is strong - the ways in which standard academia and standard academic disciplines have failed us.  I have found this very helpful.

2.  The second  part takes us into strange places - and down pitfalls that are always waiting for us.  The Saintly Us syndrome.  The uncritical valuing of 'traditional' cultures, and putting 'tradition' into conflict with 'modernity'.

At one point I think Smith fails completely - there is a brief reference to the 'myth of the Moriori', p159 in the second edition.  I think we know what is going on - there is a standard settler and colonizer discourse within New Zealand.

But Smith just dismisses the notion of the Moriori, without background - and without acknowledging the existence of people who would regard themselves as Moriori...

See

King, Michael. 2017. Moriori: A People Rediscovered.  First edition was 1999.  The Maori conquest of the Chatham Islands in 1835 is pretty well documented - and figures much in the work of theorists like Jared Diamond.  I do not think that the issues can simply be dismissed.  Racism distorts anti-racism.

  

Week 6 - December 13 2020

Silencing the Past, Power and the Production of History - Michel-Ralph Trouillot

First published 1995.  The edition I have is 2015 with Foreword by Hazel V. Carby 

Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. 2015. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press.

1.  Power shapes knowledge - though, oddly, Foucault is not referenced.  Perhaps not odd - from Haiti to North America, this Trouillot book is really a good exploration of the politics of the US Census, and US ethnic politics.  And the politics of the US Census affect us all.

2.  I have followed Trouillot a bit further - I may do more.  Indeed, there are oddities.  There is a recurring anecdote of the young woman - I assume a woman of colour - who questions Trouillot, his course and the approach.  One version of the anecdote is on page 70 of this text.  Another young woman appears on page 71.  I am not sure that the concerns of these young women have been addressed.

In another part of my working life - and Mary O'Brien is again relevant here - we have been discussing the ways in which organised religion is mostly about the control of women's bodies.  Young women, women of child-bearing age, are always a minority.  Perhaps they are a persecuted minority.

My thanks  to Lola Olufemi and the member of the Reading Group - the experience was very helpful to me, climbing out of illness into activity.

My thanks to the Poetry Translation Centre.

Patrick O'Sullivan

Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies, London Metropolitan University

Patrick O'Sullivan's Whole Life Blog http://www.fiddlersdog.com/

Archive https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ooj5btdttc9y4/Documents

Archives of the Irish Diaspora List, 1997-2017 http://idslist.friendsov.com/

https://britishmusiccollection.org.uk/composer/patrick-osullivan

 These Notes were written in January 2021, placed here on my blog October 2024.

REPORT: Brontë Studies + Diaspora Studies

I took my Brontë Studies + Diaspora Studies presentation for an outing, Monday July 1, at the Bradford Literature Festival.

https://www.bradfordlitfest.co.uk/event/lunch-bite-those-incomers-the-brontes/

It went down well.  Of course I had shaped it for that day's target audience.

In the event I was assigned a shorter time than originally planned - always the way with festivals.  We must go with flow, think on feet.

So...  Outline the method and apply the method to the Brontë material, giving detailed examples.  We map Diaspora Studies across Brontë Studies.

And abandon some sections.  I abandoned the section on Terry Eagleton, and the section on The Piano.

Sad about that - the research material on Diaspora Studies + The Piano needs developing.

Did you know that the Brontës had a piano?

Retained the section on Tuberculosis, which worked well with this audience.  Very moving - and, of course, we have all been through the Covid crisis.  Terrible to say out loud, but Ireland and the Irish do have a special relationship with Tuberculosis.  It is there in the experience, it is there in the research record.  We have done the work.

And - reaching for an example of Diaspora at Work - I turned to my own bookselves.  And took down my copy of...

MacDonagh, Donagh, and Lennox Robinson. 1959. The Oxford Book of Irish Verse. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

And re-read Donagh MacDonagh's definition of an 'Irish' writer, p xvii.  And there, in that version of The Oxford Book of Irish Verse, is Emily Brontë, pages 72-77.

I can remember exactly when I bought that copy of MacDonagh and Robinson - it was in 1963, in my First Year at New College, Oxford.

As to Brontë + Diaspora...  I am not sure about the next steps.  I have far too much material for a simple presentation, but the material is now in a tidy state - and, thanks to my efforts last Monday, I now have a much better understanding of my own thought processes.  If you see what I mean...  Certainly I will tidy the notes and references.  The whole thing is well grounded in the research material.

This is, of course, the sort of thing I should be doing, in my role as Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies, London Metropolitan University - it is the sort of thing we planned when we first discussed the role.  But I have gone on long enough, on this blog, about vicissitudes...

In my presentations on Monday I did thank all the individuals and organisations - especially here in Yorkshire - that help us to think about the Brontës, and their importance in world culture.  Almost any thought we have can be followed into the research material.  ALMOST any thought.  With the usual cautions.  But I wish that every research area that Diaspora Studies requires us to explore had such research resources.

Having thanked so many already...  I want especially to thank, here, Aidan Enright, now based at Leeds Beckett University, my friend and colleague here in Bradford - who encouraged me to organise my Brontë material.  And I thank Lizzy Newman, Creative Producer, Bradford Literature Festival.

Patrick O'Sullivan

Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies, London Metropolitan University

July 3 2024

Working Title: The lyricist in the recording studio

 Working Title:

The lyricist in the recording studio

This note is for my friends and colleagues in the Irish Diaspora Studies community, and elsewhere in academia...

We have just finished and released a second album of my songs.

All the lyrics are by me - the melodies are by various hands, including mine.

I am encouraging everyone to listen to both albums, to get a feel for the work.

I have made these 2 HearNow web sites for the 2 O'Sullivan albums...

 

Album 2

Harney Sings O'Sullivan

https://harneysingsosullivan.hearnow.com/harney-sings...

Tiny Url

https://tinyurl.com/y7txn4tp

 

Album 1

Hladowski Sings O'Sullivan

https://hladowskisingsosullivan.hearnow.com/hladowski...

TinyUrl

https://tinyurl.com/c5wkaptn

 

Note that the links to those web sites can be shared.

You can also see there the links to the main music platforms - people can move on to their usual music supplier.

But I have also set it up so that the full tracks can be listened to on the HearNow web sites. The audio quality seems good.

 

The album titles

Harney Sings O'Sullivan

Hladowski Sings O'Sullivan

Are distinctive enough and searchable...

So, two albums, 18 tracks - plus other odds and ends out there. For example, my song Salmon's Lament is on Soundcloud, The Train (Jill's Theme) is on YouTube. So, it should now be a bit clearer what it is I do - in song...

The Working Title for the overall project is: The lyricist in the recording studio

I come from the more literary end of the song lyric traditions, of course - but I have long argued that the lyricist needs to understand the microphone and the recording studio.

And that discussion takes place elsewhere...

My songs will be of interest to the Irish Diaspora Studies community, because...

1. I am myself an Irish Diaspora Study

2. The songs sit within Irish and English lyric traditions, and develop those traditions

3. Very often the songs begin as meditations on my academic work. For example, the Montparnasse Waltz, Album 2 Harney Sings O'Sullivan, arises out of my study of Sartre and diaspora.

But then, of course, they must earn their living in the song world.

4. Very often the songs are part of specific Irish Diaspora Studies projects, including theatre projects.  For example, Irish Night or May the Winds (the Holyhead Song), Album 1 Hladowski Sings O'Sullivan

5. Very often there are notes about specific songs on my blog - which develop these observations. A search will find these notes...

Thus, this is a note (much shortened) on Montparnasse Waltz...

https://fiddlersdog.blogspot.com/.../montparnasse-waltz...

This is a note which links the song, Darkness, with a line from Samuel Beckett...

https://fiddlersdog.blogspot.com/.../a-new-song-called...

And so on...

But don't get side tracked. Listen to the songs....

 

Patrick O'Sullivan

Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies, London Metropolitan University

 

Harney Sings O'Sullivan REVIEWS

 

Harney Sings O'Sullivan

REVIEWS

Our fans have posted reviews on some music platforms...

This is the album on Amazon

https://www.amazon.co.uk/music/player/albums/B0CXF8XMVY

And you can click through to a review...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/B0CXF8XMVY/ref=rwp_desktopweb_adp_arp_redirect

This is the album on Apple/iTunes

https://music.apple.com/gb/album/harney-sings-osullivan/1734832801

We are told the review is there.  But Apple has its own rules about who can see what.  We have no control over that.  You might find you are not worthy...

Just to remind you...

These are the HearNow web sites, where all tracks can be heard - with links to other platforms...

Album 2

Harney Sings O'Sullivan

https://harneysingsosullivan.hearnow.com/harney-sings-osullivan

Tiny Url

https://tinyurl.com/y7txn4tp

 

Album 1

Hladowski Sings O'Sullivan

https://hladowskisingsosullivan.hearnow.com/hladowski-sings-o-sullivan

TinyUrl

https://tinyurl.com/c5wkaptn

Patrick O'Sullivan

The second album of my songs is now complete.

I have made this HearNow web site for the album...

Harney Sings O'Sullivan

https://harneysingsosullivan.hearnow.com/harney-sings...

Tiny Url

https://tinyurl.com/y7txn4tp

The web site links to the usual music platforms. But - for those who do not have a usual music platform - I have set it up so that complete tracks, not just samples, can be played via HearNow...

I am having trouble getting the YouTube link to work on HearNow. This is it...

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8CXHKXfP1sd8lyFLQLllhQm2KWZMVS1I

Actually, that YouTube link is nice - you can see us bringing the album together.

Work in my other lives is a bit busy at the moment - but, in due course, I will put notes here on my blog, dealing with all your queries. Texts, sub-texts, turmoil, resolution...

Patrick O'Sullivan

PS

April 16 2024

I now have the YouTube links on the HearNow web sites working properly.

Album 2

Harney Sings O'Sullivan

https://harneysingsosullivan.hearnow.com/harney-sings...

Tiny Url

https://tinyurl.com/y7txn4tp

 

Album 1

Hladowski Sings O'Sullivan

https://hladowskisingsosullivan.hearnow.com/hladowski...

TinyUrl

https://tinyurl.com/c5wkaptn

Friend of Heavy, sung by Shannon Marie Harney

 

We have released Friend of Heavy, sung by Shannon Marie Harney - track 9 of the incremental album, Harney sings O'Sullivan...

Friend of Heavy, lyric and melody by Patrick O'Sullivan...

Friend of Heavy, on YouTube...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzwXLdbKOoM

Friend of Heavy, on Spotify...

https://open.spotify.com/album/1P9UILvHsPOo9TeXfOfxh7?si=SPahCQakRZmJz2bEu3I3Lw

and, in due course, on every music platform...

1.

This song was sitting on the slipway, keel in place, with a partly built superstructure...

When Shannon Marie Harney decided she wanted to take it for a spin.  She said it matched her mood...

I like what we, myself, Shannon Marie Harney and Danny Yates, have done with this song...

2.

This is most probably the most Robert Browning of my recent lyrics.  It is is part of my exploration of repetition and pattern -  in life, in art, in music.

Like, What is the Chorus for?  How does the Chorus work?  If a song has a good Chorus, we would want to take it to a live audience.

But this grim song, with that relentless A Minor...?  Would that work?  So many popular songs try to be upbeat, uplifting.  Let us go in another direction.  Be not afraid.  Heightened emotion, yes, but the emotion is depression - what the psychiatrists call a flat affect.

Note the patterned language of the verses, and the simple pattern of the Chorus.

The verses sound as if they rhyme - but, technically, by definition, I think, they do not rhyme.  They pretend to rhyme.  In rhyme, the connecting words have the same end sound.  Here the same words are simply, obsessively, repeated:  meet, god, meet, god;  might, door, might, door.

The narrative is clear - the quarrel has been horrible, horrible.  Does the narrator really believe that being a Friend of Heavy is sufficient explanation or excuse?  And...  What does that mean...  to be a Friend Of Heavy?

3.

My original plan was that the chorus would become more and more complex, musically, as the song progressed.  Maybe a cornet solo? - but would a Yorkshire brass band really want to play this dour melody?  A male voice choir? - where could we find so many depressed men?  Yes, really bad ideas... We did bring in a bit of cello, just to fill that space...

In the end, Shannon Marie Harney brought lovely harmony ideas to the Choruses.  The melody lines become - not dour - but intense...  

The melody should be easy to play on a standard chromatic autoharp.  This is the Chordify link, so that you can see the chords in place...

https://chordify.net/chords/friend-of-heavy-shannon-marie-harney-topic

It is still...  a very strange song.  

So, Track 9.  9 tracks is an album?

Patrick O'Sullivan

March 2024