Friday 15 March 2024

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...

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

 


Wednesday 6 March 2024

Thank you, Moniaive

Reading the annual report, 2024, of the President of UK Autoharps...

He gives due reverence to the work of Nadine Stah White and Ian White and Anja Lyttle, and their many helpers, in developing the Scottish Autoharp Gathering...

It looks as if Moniaive 2023 will be the last Scottish Autoharp Gathering in that formal format.

I have really enjoyed my visits to Moniaive and that special Scottish approach to Musicking...  In my other working lives we have met the Moniaive problem, which is simply one of accommodation.  If you build it, we will want to come - but where are we going to sleep?

Looking back at my notes from 2023...  Amongst the things that I thought worked ever so well in Moniaive 2023 were...


1

The music of John and Kathie Hollandsworth, a subtle and intelligent approach to a popular repertoire.

In UK Autoharps we follow the Autoharp, its strange adventures, in various niches - for example, its history as a parlour instrument or a schoolroom instrument.  It was in Virginia, USA, that the Autoharp became a folk instrument - because, as John Hollandsworth said, it got in there early, via the Sears Roebuck catalogue.  

I attach, below, a page from the 1902 Sears Roebuck, showing  Autoharps:  'one of the most popular of small instruments...  Thousands are in use and the sale keeps on increasing at a wonderful rate...  Never before has it been possible for the house to be graced with high class music at so small an expense.  The prices which we name enable the poorest to possess an instrument which will produce the sweetest music and gave just as much pleasure as would a high-priced piano.' 

Kathie Hollandsworth's historical presentation was very clear, and has been absorbed, seamlessly, into my own projects - like:  'Why the Autoharp Did Not Become A Folk Instrument in Ireland'.  More about that in due course...

 

2

A place for musicians new to the autoharp to come with their instruments - and learn and share.  The autoharp's special selling point - we get quickly to the bloody chords - means that isolated musicians find it and have fun.  

This really worked well in Moniaive 2023.  It was a pleasure to meet new people, new to the autoharp.  For...  Musicians can come to a UK Autoharps gathering to learn technique...  and vocabulary.  I remember the late, lovely, Judy Dyble saying, at her UK Autoharps presentation, 'But you have WORDS...  for THINGS...'

(Judy Dyble was, of course, not an isolated musician, singer or songwriter - but she was an isolated autoharper.  She had invented her own banjo-esque, clawhammer style.  It worked.)

 

Care and feeding of the neglected autoharp...  I have an electric Richwood Autoharp - bought secondhand, at a good price.  It looks good, and ought to be good - but I have never got on with it.  

At Moniaive George Haig took the Richwood into his experienced hands (O those hands...), listened with his experienced ear, saw with his experienced eye.  George heard the buzzing B string and pointed out the skew-whiff chord bar holder.  I had heard but I had not seen.  This was the autoharp as it had left the factory and had been sold in a shop.  Back home in Yorkshire I arranged an emergency appointment with my luthier...

I guess, in summary, Moniaive has been kind to the Autoharp, and the Autoharp has been kind to Moniaive.  Thank you, both.  And thank you Nadine, Ian and Anja... 

Patrick O'Sullivan

March 2024


 

Thursday 22 February 2024

Montparnasse Waltz, sung by Shannon Marie Harney

 



We have released Montparnasse Waltz - lyric and melody by Patrick O'Sullivan.


1.

This is Track 8 of the incremental album, Harney sings O'Sullivan.  You can hear Montparnasse Waltz on the music platforms, and you can see the album coming together...

Montparnasse Waltz

On YouTube...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-X_h6oOYKo

On Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/track/0qfhsUDqK8CNwvaiNHU3b4?si=899254573c8a4bc3

YouTube Playlist Overview

https://studio.youtube.com/playlist/PL8CXHKXfP1sd8lyFLQLllhQm2KWZMVS1I/videos

Spotify Artist Overview

https://artists.spotify.com/c/artist/3z7aYsCGwhPh7mJ0apzu4u/profile/overview

And, in due course, on every music platform - wherever you find your music...


2.

My thanks to Shannon Marie Harney, who has doggedly stuck with this project.

And who, with this song, has delivered something delicate...

And, as ever, thanks to Danny Yates, City Sound Studios...

https://www.citysoundstudios.com/


3.

By happenstance (perhaps) we have now issued recordings of two songs whose lyrics connect with my academic work, and activities in my other lives.  Indeed, there is a danger that Montparnasse Waltz will turn into a song version of a roman-à-clef.  

(The coinage 'chanson-à-clef' does not really work - all songs have clefs, and we are always searching for the right key.  Which, in my case, is usually G.)

I am going to park all that for the time being.  In due course people who want the texts and stories can have them.  For now, as one poet friend, K. E. Smith, has put it, Montparnasse Waltz is about the shock discovery that our guru has feet of clay...  And, as ever, my thanks to Ken Smith for his careful readings of text...


4.

But I can tell you how this song, Montparnasse Waltz, found its shape.  The idea had waited in my notebook for years.  It was only in 2022 that I sat down - found the brain health and space - to decide where the lyric wanted to go.  In 2023 I worked it out.

I wanted to stay in a ballad structure - with really solid ABAB, hardworking rhymes, and stay in ballad metre.  The rhymes are in charge.

I took a first draft to Danny Yates, and said, I want to set this as a Waltz.

The second draft made more visible, and audible, the waltziness of the piece - we move from 4/4 time to 3/4.  The melodies are mine, but obviously pay attention to ballad melodies.  But in 3/4 time...

My reading at the time included Colm O Lochlainn, Irish Street Ballads - two lovely volumes, 1939 and 1965, now back on the shelves behind me.  O Lochlainn prints ballad texts, based on his own collection of nineteenth century broadside ballads, alongside melodies that these lyrics would have been sung to in his time...

These are links to the O Lochlainn collection at University College Dublin...

http://digital.ucd.ie/view-media/ivrla:6274/canvas/ivrla:6275

https://www.ucd.ie/specialcollections/print/olochlainnbooks/

I think that the balladness is still there in my lyric, Montparnasse Waltz - ballad simplicity...

'There came a young man from the east...'

...And in the melodies.  We are all dipping our toes into the great lake of ballad melodies.  But mine is a waltz.


5.

I will write a separate blog entry on the graphic design decisions that went into the making of the Harney sings O'Sullivan art work, album and singles.  You can see that, again with this album, we signal the approach of the complete album in the design - and occasionally we have added extra information in our choice of font.

The Montparnasse Waltz design signals Paris in its use of the original Hector Guimard Paris Metro font - this design, by Andrew Milne, makes use of the work of Luc Devroye, McGill University, Canada.

http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-43924.html

My thanks to Andrew Milne - who persuaded me to accept the brave decision to use that authentic, distorted, Guimard tall letter P in Parnasse...

And then - with voice and guitar, Shannon Marie Harney and Danny Yates - we took the song to Paris, to that Café.  You know the one?  No, not that one - the other one.  Half way up the hill...


Patrick O'Sullivan

February 2024


Thursday 8 February 2024

Sartre, that word 'diaspora', Links and References


Jean-Paul Sartre and that word, 'diaspora':  movement in time and space

Very pleased to be able to contribute, on Thursday February 8 2024, to the series of on-line seminars ‘Repositioning Ireland’s Place in the World: Old Configurations, New Realities’, part of the G.I.S EIRE research network, organised by Grainne O'Keeffe Vigneron, University of Rennes, and Anne Groutel, University of Paris 1...

Below, some of my notes...

I see this presentation as an exploration of interdisciplinary methods - of interdisciplinary problems and interdisciplinary solutions...

I assume no knowledge of the texts explored.

My very brief paper covers research areas where we have vast amounts of original source material, and vast amounts of further research and comment.  I give here only enough to track the train of thought...

My approach is personal and discursive.  The obvious links to the general guides and sources are easily available elsewhere.

But...  If you think that there are places where you would like to see more here, I am happy to revisit this blog entry and fatten it up.

In my other working lives we have recurring problems when people try to link on small devices to long web addresses, URLs.  So, here I have also given the TinyURL, when that seemed sensible.

 

1.

The main texts under consideration are...

The original Gallimard edition of Jean-Paul Sartre, L'être et le néant: essai d'ontologie phénoménologique, 1943, translated as Being and Nothingness.

The Hazel Barnes translation...

Sartre, Jean-Paul, and Hazel E. Barnes. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Edited by Hazel E. Barnes. Philosophical Library, 1956.

and the new Sarah Richmond translation...

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology. Edited by Sarah Richmond. London: Routledge, 2018.

We also need to be aware of Sartre, Jean-Paul, Réflexions sur la question juive,1945/1946 - translated as Portrait of the Anti-Semite, London, 1948, and Anti-Semite and Jew, New York, 1948.

And the Hazel Barnes' autobiography...

Barnes, Hazel E. The Story I Tell Myself: A Venture in Existentialist Autobiography. University of Chicago Press, 1998.


2.

The 2 background articles by Patrick O'Sullivan are...

O’Sullivan, Patrick. “Developing Irish Diaspora Studies: A Personal View.” New Hibernia Review 7, no. 1 (2003): 130–48.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/c760ub1xoac22cp/2003%252C_O%2527Sullivan%252C_Developing_Irish_Diaspora_Studies.pdf/file

Tiny URL

http://tinyurl.com/bdhkzj9s

O’Sullivan, Patrick. “On First Looking into Mercier’s The Irish Comic Tradition.” New Hibernia Review 8, no. 4 (2004): 152–57.

https://www.mediafire.com/file/pdv44q6atlon2tw/2004%252C_O%2527Sullivan%252C_On_First_Looking_into_Mercier%2527s_The_Irish_Comic_Tradition.pdf/file

Tiny URL

http://tinyurl.com/yd2x5h4k

There are a number of notes on blog, here at Fiddler's Dog, which consider further my approach to Irish Diaspora Studies - most recently this one...

https://fiddlersdog.blogspot.com/2024/01/visiting-professor-of-irish-diaspora.html

See also

Greenslade, Liam. “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, 1992.

Which can be found here on my archive

https://www.mediafire.com/file/u1fra5u07609k3z/IWW2-9%252C_Greenslade%252C_White_skin%252C_white_masks.pdf/file

TinyURL

http://tinyurl.com/bdfpr4um

 

3.

That word 'diaspora'...

The 3 editions of Robin Cohen's book show the debate expanding over time...

Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas. London: UCL Press, 1997.

Cohen, Robin, Global Diasporas: An Introduction edition 2, illustrated, revised Publisher Routledge, 2008

Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas An Introduction 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2022. .

see also...

Dufoix, Stéphane, and William Rodarmor. Diasporas. 1st ed. University of California Press, 2008.

Dufoix, Stéphane. “Des Usages Antiques de Diaspora Aux Enjeux Conceptuels Contemporains.” Pallas, no. 89 (November 7, 2012): 17–33.

Kenny, Kevin. Diaspora: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2013.

and see...

Fitzgerald, Patrick, and Brian Lambkin. Migration in Irish History, 1607-2007. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, pages 275-276,

We can start thinking about diaspora as a 'type of consciousness' with Steven Vertovec - for example...

Vertovec, Steven. “Conceiving and Researching Transnationalism.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 22, no. 2 (1999): 447–62.

What is often forgotten are the obvious links between the word 'diaspora', now a word in so many languages, and the English word 'broadcast'.  One way to explore Diaspora Studies is through the parable of the sower and the seed (Matthew 13: 1–9, 18–23).

I have put that photograph of a farmer in Perthshire at the top of this page, to remind me not to forget... 


4.

This is the Perseus project at Tufts University

https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/

This link takes you directly to the paragraph in Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, cited by Kevin Kenny.

https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0200%3Abook%3D2%3Achapter%3D27

Tiny URL

http://tinyurl.com/5n8t5ufj

(Irish history specialists will notice that if, in that paragraph from Thucydides, we replace the word 'Athens' with the word 'England', and replace 'Aegina' with 'Ireland', the paragraph still makes sense - and becomes a summary of the history of these islands...)

Note that you can use the Perseus web site to explore all the uses and variants of the word 'speiro', including '(dia)speiro'...

This is Herodotus, Histories...

https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0126%3Abook%3D7%3Achapter%3D91

Tiny URL

http://tinyurl.com/4xkzemxn

There is, of course, a huge debate - and a fascinating, but delicately poised, research literature.  See, for example...

Thompson, Thomas L, and Philippe Wajdenbaum. The Bible and Hellenism: Greek Influence on Jewish and Early Christian Literature. Edited by Thomas L Thompson and Philippe Wajdenbaum. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014.


5.

Black Swans...

The examples I should reference properly include...

Spicer, Edward H. “The Yaqui Indians of Arizona.” Kiva 5, no. 6 (1940): 21–24.

Which helps us find...

Calloway, C G. The Western Abenakis of Vermont, 1600-1800: War, Migration, and the Survival of an Indian People. The Civilization of the American Indian Series. University of Oklahoma Press, 1994

And see...

Lavelle, Michael. “Nationality and the Irish Abroad.” In Irish Man - Irish Nation Lectures on Some Aspects of Irish Nationality Delivered Before the Columban League, Maynooth, During 1946. Dublin: Mercier Press, 1947.


6.

This is a source for that G. K. Chesterton quote - but you will find it all over the place...

https://chesterton.wordpress.com/category/the-common-man/

'Philosophy is merely thought that has been thought out. It is often a great bore.

But man has no alternative, except between being influenced by thought that has been thought out and being influenced by thought that has not been thought out.'

(Here in Bradford, Yorkshire, the revived Bradford Irish Society is considering a project about the Right Reverend Monsignor John O'Connor, 1870–1952, Chesterton's friend, often considered the model for Chesterton's detective, Father Brown.  The Reverend O’Connor’s final parish was St Cuthbert's, Bradford – St. Cuthbert’s Church is a few yards from my home.)

On my blog is a brief note which also engages with the habits of the philosophical method...

https://fiddlersdog.blogspot.com/2022/06/a-shipowner-was-about-to-send-to-sea.html

As an example of thinking about this academic area - I remember liking the work of David Concepción...

Concepción, David W. “Reading Philosophy with Background Knowledge and Metacognition.” Teaching Philosophy 27, no. 4 (2004): 351–68.

 

7.

Reputation of Sartre...  Well...  Where to begin...

The key text for me is the brief mention in...

Magee, Bryan. The Great Philosophers: An Introduction to Western Philosophy. Oxford Paperbacks. Oxford University Press, 2000, pages 275-6

Originally published 1987, and based on a television series...

I see that the original television interview is available on YouTube...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4_Tsjmqxak&t=2432s

...key moment, at 37 minutes onwards, when the interviewee says that Heidegger described Being and Nothingness as 'muck', 'Dreck'...  And Magee says '...It is difficult to believe that Sartre will survive as a philosopher...'

See also

Manser, Anthony R. “Sartre and Le Néant.” Philosophy 36, no. 137 (1961): 177–87.

I will look at Hazel Barnes' comments on Sartre, and my own difficulties with Sartre...

 

8.

This is the web site of the Delancey Street Foundation, San Francisco, USA...

 https://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/wwa.php

'We are a community where people with nowhere to turn, turn their lives around.

Delancey Street is the country's leading residential self-help organization for former substance abusers, ex-convicts, homeless and others who have hit bottom...' 

and this link takes you to the restaurant...

https://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/enterrestaurant.php

'Delancey Street Restaurant is a key training school of the Delancey Street Foundation, the country's largest self-help residential organization for people who have hit bottom to completely rebuild their lives. Like the immigrants who came through Ellis Island to Delancey Street on New York's Lower East Side at the turn of the century to start new lives, newcomers to Delancey Street Foundation are "immigrants" of all races, all ages, all backgrounds, who come together in this community of last resort...'

 

9.

I look briefly at the renewed interest in Réflexions sur la question juive, Anti-Semite and Jew...

Let me note the helpful work of Stuart Charmé...

Charmé, Stuart Z. Authentically Jewish: Identity, Culture, and the Struggle for Recognition. Rutgers University Press, 2022.

 

10.

Songs

We have recorded, and have released, one of my Sartre songs...  This is Pierre, on YouTube...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb5zeD6G3Ko

But you will find it on every music streaming platform.  Worth listening to on one of the better quality platforms, to hear the detail of the arrangement.

This is the link to the discussion on my blog...

http://fiddlersdog.blogspot.com/2024/01/pierre-sung-by-shannon-marie-harney.html

The important point here is that we have an explanation for the Duke of Wellington's appearance, or non-appearance, in Sartre's Being and Nothingness...

 

Patrick O'Sullivan

Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies

London Metropolitan University

February 8 2024


PS

Below my own outline, which became my road map through this research material...

Patrick O’Sullivan 

Jean-Paul Sartre and that word, 'diaspora':  movement in time and space

 OUTLINE January 11 2024

‘In the Ancient world, the term “diaspora” referred to the profound cohesion and dispersion of the Jewish people.  We can make use of this word…’

Sartre, J.-P. (2018) Being and Nothingness: An Essay in Phenomenological Ontology, Translated by Sarah Richmond. London: Routledge, page 201.

On page 172 of the original Gallimard edition of L'être et le néant: essai d'ontologie phénoménologique, 1943, Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre becomes preoccupied with a new word, ‘diaspora’.  In my 1969 copy of the 1956 Hazel Barnes translation of Being and Nothingness the word first appears on page 136.  In the new 2018 translation, by Sarah Richmond, it is page 201.  The word ‘diaspora’ is there in Sartre’s thought for a further 80 pages – then disappears.

These uses of the word ‘diaspora’ by Sartre have not been much noticed.  The word does not appear in the standard works on Sartre.  And the name ‘Sartre’ does not appear in the standard works on Diaspora.  The word ‘diaspora’ does appear in Sarah Richmond’s index to her translation.

In this paper, I outline the place of Sartre in my own personal history, and in the history of my generation - and in my thinking as I developed Irish Diaspora Studies.  Through an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Sartre, I suggest a method behind a reading of Being and Nothingness (philosophy as genre).  I look briefly at the light thrown by that reading on a later work, Réflexions sur la question juive,1945/1946 - translated as Portrait of the Anti-Semite, London, 1948, and Anti-Semite and Jew, New York, 1948.  And I look at the few brief mentions of Sartre’s interest in the word 'diaspora’ that I have been able to find. 

I end with a summary of Sartre’s notion of ‘diaspora’, drawn from the book, Being and Nothingness.  The form of words that Sartre uses - ‘reflection is a diasporic phenomenon’ – seems to anticipate later developments in diaspora theorising.  The interdisciplinary approach would question any simple overlap – this paper thus becomes an exploration of interdisciplinary processes.  At the very least, Sartre’s use of the word ’diaspora’ must have a place in the history of uses of that disputed word.

This paper takes its place in the series of on-line seminars ‘Repositioning Ireland’s Place in the World: Old Configurations, New Realities’, part of the G.I.S EIRE research network, organised by Grainne O'Keeffe Vigneron, University of Rennes, and Anne Groutel, University of Paris 1.

 

Patrick O’Sullivan January 11 2024

© Patrick O’Sullivan 2024

Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies, London Metropolitan University

 

 

Jean-Paul Sartre, page 172 of the original Gallimard edition of L'être et le néant: essai d'ontologie phénoménologique, 1943, Being and Nothingness...

Sunday 28 January 2024

Pierre, sung by Shannon Marie Harney


Pierre, sung by Shannon Marie Harney,

I am pleased to be able to announce that we have released another track, in our developing project...

Pierre, sung by Shannon Marie Harney - words and music by Patrick O'Sullivan - can now be seen, and heard, on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify... 


1.  

Pierre...

On Spotify

https://open.spotify.com/album/04u6hf1izab0zFQxv0vgHS?si=Rjus8RScRy2OP--FcqHAfg

On Apple Music

https://music.apple.com/us/album/pierre-single/1726253895

On YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hb5zeD6G3Ko

And, in due course, on every streaming service...

My thanks to Shannon Marie Harney, and to Danny Yates, City  Sound Studios...

https://www.citysoundstudios.com/

Pierre is the final song in my 2010 song lyric book, Love Death and Whiskey...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Death-Whiskey-Patrick-OSullivan/dp/095678240X


2.

I - like (I think) many people - found 2023 an odd, hard year.  Yes, we were able to move about, but it seemed difficult to bring any endeavour to completion.  So many fractured networks, so much illness.  Sometimes all we could do was be dogged...

And sometimes 'It’s dogged as does it...'

And we did  it.

There are problems with dogged - keep development routes open, but do not over-promise.


3.

Going to the café to meet Pierre...  Is the moment when, reading Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness, we think, O, I get it.

There is by now something of a tradition of reading that moment in Being and Nothingness as Being about Being In Love.  That is how Andy Martin reads it, in his book...

Martin, Andy. The Boxer and The Goal Keeper: Sartre Versus Camus. Simon & Schuster UK, 2012.

We think, like Sam in Love Actually, of the 'total agony of being in love'.  Perhaps we think of the Second Date.  Anticipation, excitement.  A tryst?

In the background are my thoughts about song - like, maybe you do not need a long text to make a long song, with its own narrative and development.  And my thanks  to the performers who helped me work out those thoughts.


4.

Of course, at that moment, in reading in Being and Nothingness, we do not actually get to meet Pierre.  He is not there.  As powerful in his absence as is Godot.

We should really read the name 'Pierre' in Being and Nothingness as simply a place holder in a philosopher's thought experiment - a very common name, any man, much like English-speaking philosophers talk of Tom, Dick and Harry.

(And they do.  They do.)

Later in Being and Nothingness we DO meet Pierre.  A lot.  Pierre, a hapless fellow, and not that interesting, wanders from predicament to predicament, from thought experiment to thought experiment.  I briefly considered, and immediately discarded, the notion of something about the further adventures of Sartre's Pierre.  Nah.


5.

Then things get more complex than is strictly tolerable.

Evidently the first appearance of Pierre is something of a private joke - I am going to use that word 'joke' - between de Beauvoir and Sartre.  Those pages in Being and Nothingness meditate on a section of de Beauvoir's novel - L' Invitee/ She Came to Stay.  Which is itself a mediation on their complex love life, and just one ménage à trois.  (Actually, it is a ménage à quatre - but let us not get bogged down...)

My source here is a chapter by Edward Fullbrook and Kate Fullbrook...

Fullbrook, Edward, and Kate Fullbrook. “The Absence of Beauvoir.” In Feminist Interpretations of Jean-Paul Sartre, edited by Julien S. Murphy, 45–63. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.

See also

Fullbrook, Edward. “She Came to Stay and Being and Nothingness.” Hypatia 14, no. 4 (January 19, 1999): 50–69. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810826.

In the novel Elisabeth enters the room of her rival, Francoise - there is evidence of the recent presence of Francoise, and evidence of her absence.  Her stockings, her perfume.  There is a bust of Napoleon, there is an open volume of Shakespeare.

Also absent from the room is the errant husband - Pierre.

In Being and Nothingness Sartre signals his interest in de Beauvoir's novel, by developing the absence of Pierre.  From the café.  Also absent from the café are the Duke of Wellington and Paul Valery.

When I wrote my own mediation on Pierre, many years ago, I did not know then that de Beauvoir originally wrote 'Napoleon' and Sartre, jokingly, changed that to 'Wellington' - which I had changed to Napoleon.  But I am not at all surprised.

I should explain that 'Napoleon' is simply far more present in English-speaking story and song...

https://shannonselin.com/2018/01/songs-about-napoleon-bonaparte/

There used to be a pub, here in Bradford, Yorkshire, called The Napoleon...

https://www.closedpubs.co.uk/yorkshire/bradford_bd4_napoleon.html

While we are at it...  Pierre, of course, has his own history in song.  We could begin with You Never Can Tell, by Chuck Berry - 'You could see that Pierre did truly love the mademoiselle'.  Which becomes the track for the Twist Competition in Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.  Which refers to the one-take 'Madison' sequence in Godard's Bande à Part...


6.

I really do thank the performers and musicians who have allowed me to develop my thinking about song, and develop my practice - exploring pattern, repetition, structure.  Pierre is an example.

As I say, in this project, I especially thank Shannon Marie Harney, and Danny Yates, City  Sound Studios...

Now...  Back to my well wrought urns...


Patrick O'Sullivan

January 2024


Below, the page from Hazel Barnes' translation, in which Pierre, the Duke of Wellington and Paul Valery do not appear...






Monday 8 January 2024

Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies, London Metropolitan University (Continued)

 

Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies, London Metropolitan University (Continued 2024)

January 7 2024

My thanks to the friends and colleagues who noticed the anniversary of the start of my relationship with London Metropolitan University, and my role there, Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies...

And, yes, London Metropolitan University and I have (quietly) agreed that we should continue our relationship for a further year.  We have plans.

My thanks to Don MacRaild, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Exchange, and Lynn Dobbs, Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of London Metropolitan University. 

I must also thank the patient staff of London Metropolitan University, especially in the Library and in Research Support - who have been so helpful in difficult times.

Our thing, this Visiting Professor thing, began towards the end of 2019.  Then and early in 2020 I held a series of meetings in London - making links, exploring ideas and possible projects.  I walked and talked.  London, with its complex past and present, and its many academic strengths, ought to be a world centre for Diaspora Studies.  It isn't.

Well, as you know, all plans were kiboshed by the pandemic.  I wrote a (rather sad) little note, which is still there on my blog...

 https://fiddlersdog.blogspot.com/2020/06/visiting-professor-of-irish-diaspora.html

And I am still sad.  Here are some rock pools of sadness, chosen from many such pools...

 

1.

Notre Autre Voisin...

It was always obvious, and was even more obvious in 2020, that, if we wanted to develop Irish Diaspora Studies in London, in the South of England, we should reach out to our colleagues in France.  Especially in Northern France, a few hours away.

And this was working well.  For example, our colleagues at the University of Caen, and Caen University Press, made available to us, as a gift to London Metropolitan University, a selection of their books in our field.  The books arrived just in time to be locked away, as the virus crisis took hold.

But we have, thankfully, stayed in touch online with our colleagues in France - there have been online gatherings.  Always in Irish Diaspora Studies, when I am struggling to explain a train of thought, perfect examples present themselves.  I think here particularly of Nathalie Sebbane's presentation, the thought behind her book about the Magdalene Laundries...  See...

Sebbane, N. (2021) Memorialising the Magdalene Laundries: From Story to History. Peter Lang .

For me, in the background, in this conversation with Ireland's Other Neighbour, is a developing project about differing national and scholarly/academic approaches to Irish matters -  it is an 'Irish Diaspora Studies' critique of 'Irish Studies'.  I have quietly collected the material for many years...

This must now be, in part, a dialogue with the 2021 Handbook edited by Renée Fox and colleagues...

Fox, R., Cronin, M. and Ó Conchubhair, B. (2021) Routledge International Handbook of Irish Studies. Routledge.

...especially a dialogue with Michael Cronin's chapter 3, 'Irish Studies in the non-Anglophone world'.

This is that Michael Cronin, of Trinity College Dublin - whose work on translation we admire and use.

Not Mike Cronin, Boston College, one of the Editors of the Handbook - who is also admired.  Mike Cronin's own chapter in the Handbook is Chapter 10, 'Connections and capital: the diaspora and Ireland’s global networks'.

Similar dialogue with Michael and Mike. And all good wishes...

Thus we are in meditation with a remark by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, that 'Irish Studies' was invented by Joseph Campbell at Fordham, in 1926...  See p11 of...

Campbell, J. and Ní Chuilleanáin, E. (2001) ‘As I was Among the Captives’: Joseph Campbell’s Prison Diary, 1922-1923. Cork: Cork University Press.

We look at the different underpinnings, intellectual and structural, in different places, in the development of Irish Studies and Irish Diaspora Studies.  And specific difficulties...

 

2.

The Theology of Diaspora...

My notes on this began, long ago, with a reading of Nicholas Lash...

Lash, N. (1982) A Matter of Hope: A Theologian’s Reflections on the Thought of Karl Marx. Longman and Todd.

There have been notes shared, over the years, with a number of colleagues - I think now of Thomas O'Loughlin, in Nottingham.  And, more recently, Aidan Beatty, in Pittsburgh

Where would I begin nowadays?  Maybe with Jeremiah 29, which is both an Emigrant Letter (as we now understand these things) and a Diaspora Policy (as we now understand these things).

Or Diaspora This Worldly/Theology Next Wordly?

Certainly the Theology of Diaspora is something that needs to be refreshed, and there is enough interest to develop some kind of exploration and gathering.

(Recently, in a discussion elswhere, I made the interdisciplinary point that when the word, 'diaspora' moved from Greek literature and history - it is used mostly in histories - to the Greek language version of the Bible, it changed disciplines.  It moved from history to theology.

 

3.

Rhyme And...

In recent times I have worked a lot alongside colleagues in what are broadly called the Digital Humanities.  I am the guy who asks the obvious questions - I do this because it is part of my role to collate the obvious answers.

It is complained, perhaps fairly, that too often the Digital Humanities represent a solution in search of a problem.  For this very reason I collect problems that will welcome Digital Humanities solutions.  These can be problems within Irish Diaspora Studies, or problems that can be given an Irish Diaspora Studies spin.

And so to Rhyme...  I am unusual amongst the poets of my generation in that I am comfortable with traditional poetic techniques.  I know how they work, and I know how to make them work...

I won't go into detail here - but we are in a strange golden age of Rhyme.  Rhyme has spread into cultures with no previous history of popular rhyming verse.  It might be the influence of Rap, or it might be the influence of John Skelton and Edith Sitwell...

But the obvious starting point - the spin - for us, today, is with W. B. Yeats.  And I can give my standard lecture on Yeats and Rhyme.

To my joy - when I began planning work for the Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies - I found myself exchanging notes with Marjorie Perloff, who seems as active and charming as ever.  (I am not.)

Her early book on Yeats...

Perloff, M. (1970) Rhyme and Meaning in the Poetry of Yeats. Paris: Mouton

...has always seemed to me to offer a Digital Humanities approach.  Avant la lettre.

And now the software is in place, and I am in touch with the software developers - and we can test my observation.

Marjorie Perloff herself explains that behind her thesis, and the subsequent book, is the approach of Craig LaDrière, at the Catholic University, Washington.  LaDrière looked, in the study of literature, for things to measure - we are familiar with this approach in the social sciences and in the development of social policy.   I guess that LaDrière himself has pretty much disappeared from view - the Ezra Pound specialists might know the name.  LaDrière did some nice work on genre.  In her Memoir, p226, Marjorie Perloff comments that this focus on the 'ontology of poetry' put the Catholic University students, in a curious way, 'ahead of the game' in later developments in the worlds of theory.

There are moments when Marjorie Perloff's Memoir offers footnotes to Irish Diaspora Studies - like the series of chances that took her to the Catholic University, Washington, to sit alongside all those nuns and Christian Brothers, and study under LaDrière.  LaDrière would always arrive late to give his lectures, and would always begin his lectures by reciting the Hail Mary prayer.  In French.

Marjorie Perloff's own Memoir is a powerful, thoughtful, moving classic of Diaspora Studies - it is a book I would be happy to bring to a seminar.  I will be fulsome.

Perloff, M. (2004) The Vienna Paradox: A Memoir. New Directions Books.

It asks the question:  what does a little 4 year girl, of Jewish heritage, fleeing across the Atlantic from Anschluss Vienna, need to know?  It recounts how German-speaking Gabriele became English-speaking Marjorie - as Amerika became America.  The Memoir's Epilogue includes little nods to Terry Eagleton, on Wittgenstein of course, and to Yeats...

 

4.

And so forth...


5.

The Diaspora Dictum

...is:  Do what you can, where you are.  As opportunities arise, and when I am asked, I am getting back into the habit of academic lecturing and presentations - and have not done too badly, really, with projects about the Emigrant Letter, Ireland and the BBC, Jonathan Swift, Denis Johnston, Samuel Beckett, and more.  The themes outlined above give a flavour.  

I continue, as usual, the collation of research material and research advice.  Here in Yorkshire, I have given my support to the revived Bradford Irish Society - who have asked me to give a lecture on the Irish origins and interests of the Brontës.  That is the sort of thing I can do - an Irish Diaspora Studies approach.  Of course.

 

Patrick O'Sullivan

Visiting Professor of Irish Diaspora Studies

London Metropolitan University 

January 7 2024

 

p.osullivan@londonmet.ac.uk

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

Personal Fax 0044 (0) 709 236 9050

 

 

 

Saturday 16 December 2023

Good Drying Day, sung by Shannon Marie Harney



Good Drying Day

Sung by Shannon Marie Harney

Lyric and Melody by Patrick O'Sullivan


New song out there, doing nicely...

Yes, a song about Doing the Laundry...

The song will be visible and audible on every other streaming platform, in due course...


Has already turned up on Apple...

Good Drying Day

https://music.apple.com/us/album/good-drying-day-single/1717826586

 

And Spotify...

https://open.spotify.com/track/1H4dFwc13IvmEWY16CDLL1


https://open.spotify.com/album/2WhXEzFHzGzs842EoQxulZ?si=Sj3uh0qETlGF07X4sA1v-g

 

And YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he61fkuRtl0

 

Worth listening on a higher quality platform, if you have access - to hear the detail of the arrangement...

Note that through Musixmatch Pro I am able to slot in lyrics on the platforms that will accept lyrics, like Spotify.

Musixmatch will even have a stab at translating lyrics...

https://www.musixmatch.com/es/letras/Shannon-Marie-Harney/Good-Drying-Day

 

This is the French...

https://www.musixmatch.com/es/letras/Shannon-Marie-Harney/Good-Drying-Day/traduccion/frances


In tidying the lyric I left enough subtext and back story in place, I think, to satisfy those who like subtext and backstory.  Others will not notice.  

What the BBC calls 'a certain brand' of washing machine plays a little phrase from Schubert's Trout at the end of its cycle.  

It is Samsung.  

So...  We quote Schubert at the beginning of Good Drying Day...

...and the laundry is done...


Patrick O'Sullivan

December 2023