A view from a train.

That’s week one of the second semester done and I’m sitting on a train - my first free travel one too - much more civilised than the train I was on exactly two weeks ago - Palermo - Napoli, nine and a half hours of beautiful scenery seen through the grimiest windows.  This is a much shorter trip to Dublin where I will spend the next couple of days.

While the trip is mostly to visit family, I look forward to doing a couple of hours busking at The Dublin Food Co-op where I played almost every Saturday when I last lived there.  While I miss my dog, the week in college has been a breeze without the pull of checking that she’s not too miserable every couple of hours.  It’s been a week of funerals in Limerick too with Cranberries singer, Delores O’Riordan being buried on Tuesday and, at just over twice her 46 years, my host for my time in College, Joe Neiland, two days later.  JB, RIP.

The outline for the rest of the semester looks really exciting - Donal Lunny for instance will be workshopping production with us, Seamus Fogarty, who’s album I haven’t tired of listening to since his 2017 visit, has been made ‘Songwriter in Residence’ and will be paying a few visits.  Another different and interesting project will be a collaboration to write a song for a choir or ensemble to be performed by invitation for President Higgins.  There is a possibility that this project will be mentored by Bill (You Raise Me Up) Whelan.  Watch this space.  

New for me this semester is Somatics and, I won’t get into semantics but it’s not Yoga.  Nice to get to lie on the floor for and hour and slow down - even though the 9am start is challenging.  Also new is a creative writing module although I have still to meet the course tutor for this, I think I will enjoy.

Yesterday, we had our first visiting songwriters.  Niwel Tsumbu and Eamonn Cagney also did a lunchtime concert in the Tower Theatre.  The chemistry between Niwel on guitar and Eamonn on percussion has to be seen to be believed.  If you can imagine Rodriguez Guitar Concerto fused with African rhythm, you would be too far off the mark.  Amazing stuff but I wondered what relevance the workshop with them in the afternoon could have for a couple of wordsmiths.

Rhythm is undoubtedly not my strongest suit and I did say to Carl at the concert that, if 1% of what they did rubbed off on me, it would make a huge difference.  I have been doing some work with Steve, my guitar teacher on this and actually began to write a song on Wednesday - on the piano (which I can’t actually play) which has a much more rhythmic vibe to anything I’ve done before with lyrics that are anything but profound.

The workshop with Niwel and Eamonn turned out to be really interesting.  At the concert, most of what they played was instrumental though there were some songs with words too.  I asked Niwel how often he’d write lyrics in English and he told us that he wrote rhythm and syncopation and, for hime at least the words were the least important part of his songs.  Sure, when he used words, he liked them to be saying something posititve and that the simpler he kept them, the greater the number of people would relate to them but, in his mind he’d be just as happy to just work with the ‘feeling’ and sing, ‘Da da da ta ta bam bam bam’, just using the syncopation with what else was going on. Refreshing.

’She Loves Ice Cream’ will benefit from this workshop and could even have ‘hit’ potential.  We’ll see.  

From an investigation of chanted music 900-1200, I have given myself the task of arranging ’Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ in parts.  I’m curious to see how this works out, not that thisd is likely to have the same x-factor.

On Tuesday night, walking back across the Living Bridge from the main campus, as I neared the Music & Dance Academy building, I realised that I actually felt that I belonged here and that for the previous semester, I’d felt more like a visitor admiring the furniture.  I hope this continues through to the end of part two.