Grahame
Some words for the man who taught me the joy of music
I tried to write a post about something else today but no words came. It’s crazy how loss makes my vision blur. Even behind my bug-eyed glasses, the letters swirl and squirm. And I find myself in the strange position of listening to my own music through the tinny speakers in my laptop, filled with crumbs and squatting dust, to be my own chaperone through this felt-before feeling. I think how strange it feels to be in the business of writing refrains but still unable to prepackage pain. I press play on all the well-worn albums that have helped me grieve in the past, grateful for the balm, reminded of the need for soft music and art. I needed all your words today. I have misplaced mine in the seeping fog. There’s no button on this foreign bus to tell the driver when I need to get off.
It’s times like this I wish I believed in an afterlife so I could see you in the stars tonight. You were neither a genius nor god-complex type but loved and loving in the crevices of daily life. Outward bound, undelayed in your faith that people can bring about change. I wish I’d been old enough to ask your thoughts on science and religion as I Polyfilla the cracks in my faithless cynicism. But I did know your position on Kit Kats and rain macs - always pack more than you need and share them along with the roof over your head. Open door policies will be forever entrenched in the constitution of my existence. As is your insistence to wash my sticky fingers before touching an instrument. The same fingers filled with lead now as I wonder if you’re proud that there’s finally a musician in the family. After all those years singing hymns in the church choir, me in the third row, learning long and slow from your big grins the joy and community that music can bring. You didn’t preach to me of sin but sent instead, by Royal Mail, new editions of your favourite opera scores. And listened secretly outside the door as I learnt to sing at your piano, the one you sold in your old age, in the name of your trademark pragmatism. I’m sorry I never let you listen.
I thought I lost you long ago, when your memories went to half from whole. But today I feel alone without you as my mountaintop, there’s a steep drop from the cliff and no one to hold my ankles too tight as I peer over the top. But I know you’ll live on in me and the idiosyncracies of my dad. So familiar, it’s strange to see the direct veins from father to son. It feels cruel for the old to befriend the young, knowing that this moment would come.
And a piece of me will go with you, not to the grave but to the sky. I’ll never forget the man who showed me how to fly.
This year I’m on a quest to try and support myself more through my music and writing in the hopes that I can dedicate more time to both. In light of this, I have switched on a paid subscription to this weekly blog which you can sign up to below if you would like to, and are able to, support me on the slightly mad mission to being a full-time artist. Thank you for being here.
Meet you on the stage
27th February - London @ Ink84 Bookshop (solo headline show at the bookshop where I work!)
Meet you in the bookshop
Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants - Mathias Énard
A very beautiful book I read recently, it’s a fictional account of Michelangelo travelling to Constantinople to design a bridge to connect the city. Every page holds it’s own with winding, decadent prose pruning a little pseudo-historical anecdote that is delightfully unplaceable.
