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© Brian Mitchell 2021
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For lovers of music, poetry, and the Crack-that most Irish of nouns. Quotidia is that space, that place, where ordinary people lead ordinary lives. But where, from time to time, they encounter the extraordinary.
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So where does it come from? This urge to create something new that itches until scratched, wherein a spark ignites a flame that may grow into a conflagration, or which is more likely, merely results in reddened, irritated skin as flaking epithelial cells drift slowly to the floor to accumulate as one of the more harmless components of household dust.More
Time goes running, even/As we talk. Take the present, the future’s no one’s affair.// Horace, with his unsentimental eye, says it so well. More
For New Years Eve 2024, I leave you with something hopeful- this from Psalm 18, may serve: "You Lord, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light."More
The best prophets have the capacity to surprise us! “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.” More
What ⟨a⟩ piece of work is a man, how noble in/reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving/how express and admirable; in action how like/an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the/beauty of the world, the paragon of animals and/yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Hamlet Act 2 scene 2More
Let’s hope that Armageddon is always scheduled for mañana. As Anonymous puts it, dispelling the gloom of this post, let this be the November you always remember. The November you chose to believe there was more to your future than you were able to see. More
One of my favourite songs from this source was The Castle of Dromore. The words of the song were written by Sir Harold Boulton to a traditional tune, My Wife is Sick, lulling a child to sleep with a prayer for safety against the wild weather and "Clan Eoin's wild Banshee." More
The chord sequence for Blue Moon is one I learned when first I picked up a guitar in my mid-teens. It is known as the doo- wop progression and Blue Moon is the first popular song to utilise it according to some sources. More
There is a present scientific conceit gaining ground that we are living in a vast simulation. Our seemingly authentic lives governed by our own free will- just a façade as flimsy as the setting of the song. Seems to me that such an alien technology just might as well be called God and be done with it! More
The next song is, arguably, the most overplayed, over sung, over loved and over hated of any Irish ballad. Its antecedents are not entirely Irish- I have even read somewhere that it has Korean origins- but let’s not go down that particular rabbit hole. I speak, of course, of Danny Boy.More
In my youth, beguiled by whimsical notions of the dark Romantic imagination, I would have chosen the eldritch Selkie tale; now, unquestionably, I would choose the quotidian world of Margaret and the Dutchman she loves. More
Some say, Such Is Life, were the final words of Ned Kelly as he stood on the scaffold of Melbourne Gaol. In fact, his final words were Ah Well, I suppose…which his detractors use to claim that he was just mumbling incoherently at the end. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth, Ah Well, in the mouths of Irish people has the same plangency as Virgil’s sunt lacrimae rerum- there are tears at the heart of things.More
Don’t look back in humiliation or disappointment or with a sense of failure. Don’t look back at all is probably too extreme a prescription- but don’t look back if all it’s going to do is leave welts on your soul. More
Most of us living in Western countries owe our rather comfortable lives to those who, for the past hundred years- and more- served in the armed forces, some making the ultimate sacrifice, others with life-altering mental and or physical injuriesMore
As a teenager I would visit my girlfriend (later wife) where she lived in the docks area of Belfast. Her father, a noted traditional fiddler in Northern Ireland, worked for many years at Harland and Wolff, the firm who built the Titanic. He made her a doll’s house from scrap material there, and, of course, I worked this and myself into the bridge of the song. As I say, hubris not entirely expunged. More
For those starving or dying of thirst, a scrap of food or drink of water may be the only thing that counts. For each individual, the only thing that matters is what counts for you!More
The Rocky Road to Dublin features a young man who leaves home to make his mark on the world, Let’s now follow him as he makes his way from Galway to Dublin and then to Liverpool.More
Sydney Carter saw Christ as the incarnation of the piper who is calling us. He dances that shape and pattern which is at the heart of our reality... Coming and going by the dance, I see/That what I am not a part of me./ Dancing is all that I can ever trust,/ The dance is all I am, the rest is dust./I will believe my bones and live by what/ Will go on dancing when my bones are not.// More
The woman I love says to give it up now/Or else I’ll go to an early grave,/But I say no and keep resisting/For taking drink’s what prolongs your days./ Seamus HeaneyMore
Welcome to Letters from Radio Quotidia the NYE2023 program where, on New Year’s Eve, we look back at the things that, at times, we wish weren’t and forwards to what we wish might be. More
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