Death of a magpie
and some shiny bits I've gathered recently
Hello hello,
I’ve had to take a short hiatus from posting here on Substack as I turn my attention to School of Song for the month. We are now halfway through the series of workshops, and I’ve found it to be such an enjoyable undertaking - a satisfying challenge to analyse one’s own process. It’s an honour to be tasked with thinking so deeply about something that has become a way of life.
My efforts here on Substack, though out of my capacity currently, have not been far from my mind. In a few weeks, the Tarot of Songwriting will be reaching its conclusion, for want of a better word, and I’ve been grateful for the forced pause. It has allowed me to reflect on the project as a whole and attempt to identify if any conclusions can be drawn. It is not in my skill set as a writer, or human, to artfully draw people towards a long foregone conclusion; rather, I tend to put my faith in form appearing as a consequence of curiosity. Though it rarely lets me down, it can be a chaotic process - so as always, thank you for bearing with me.
In other news - I played three shows in two days at Manchester’s beautiful Albert Hall, concluding my live performances in support of this album. Thank you to all those who made it along, particularly to a Thursday matinee! I was 29 weeks pregnant by the time those shows rolled around - funny to be concluding an album cycle about becoming a parent while the prospect of returning to square one looms so large, quite literally.
It wasn’t my final performance before setting up nest, however, as I also had the great honour of performing a song at the funeral of a family friend - a man from whom I learnt the value and possibilities of curiosity and, incidentally, from whom I stole the idea of “the magpie” section of this Substack. Whenever he would visit our family home, he would always bring a nylon string guitar - idly practicing, reclined on a sofa in the living room, serenading those of us that nattered on with Spanish and classical motifs. He was forever tearing things out of newspapers, quotes, or whatever, fixing them along with transcriptions from novels or just observations made in the field of the living into small notebooks. As a consequence, he had a witty one-liner for every occasion. He was the living Magpie. The song I played at his funeral was Alas, I Cannot Swim - as it was he who introduced me to the great line from the original Pashto poem - "there’s a boy across the river with an arse like a peach, but alas, I cannot swim”.* So, with his memory in mind, here’s a collection of shiny things that have caught my attention lately: