Author: cwmckenna

Taking Stock

To my girl,

Thank you first and foremost for drawing back here; drawing me back to creativity and expression and reminding why we set this up in the first place. I needed it, I’m having another “what is this life” moment and I’m re-evaluating my priorities and self goals in the short and long term.

You asked about my relationship with music, reconnecting with Music… the “experiment” as you put it. Well, here’s an update.

I bought a record player. My little red leather suitcase has pride of place in my living room, and often I sit on the the wooden floor basking in sunlight listening to vintage vinyl from Mum and Dad. Dreams do come true. Whole albums are listened to and time slows when I stop to take a moment to myself. I’ve bought new releases too, like ‘Hummingbird‘ by John Smith (the title track which I discovered using the app “Shazam” whilst standing in a music shop in Brighton in October).

Since June last year, I’ve taken action to strengthen my love affair with Music. I know you smiled when I told you that I joined an amateur musical theatre group, taking a leaf out of your book and treading the not-so-familiar boards recently in our 6 nights run of performances. I loved it. I loved being part of something and working together to create something real and concrete, feeling like part of a community. We rehearsed for months and it paid off, I made friends and it was great to have something in my life that wasn’t work but that required as much focus and attention.

I’ve been to more gigs! Lau in August (and in December) were a highlight, deepening my relationship with the Scottish music scene. What a night was had as part of the Edinburgh International Music Festival, a wealth of talent and experience right on my doorstep. I’ve since moved flat and am a mere stones throw from the Leith Theatre venue so I’m always keen to see what’s going on there, including seeing The Coral there  a few months ago. That night seeing Lau sticks out in my memory too, because I had finally stepped away from an incredibly negative relationship and the release was empowering. I spent the whole evening either dancing freely with Fran or eyeballing the bartender over multiple gin and tonics (to much success thank you very much, and the lovely J and I are still in touch). It wouldn’t be my story if there wasn’t a little romance mixed up in the music, and again I know you’ll smile because you know it’s true.

A life goal was ticked off last summer too! Well, perhaps not a life goal but certainly something which I had longed for since childhood. Liam Gallagher, you brash, cool and tears-of-joy inducing rock-n-roll star. From way back when I used to sit at the foot of the stone staircase in our house in NB listening through the door to my older brother’s tape player blasting ‘Wonderwall‘ I have loved Oasis. I must have been about 6 or 7 years old but I knew all the words. You didn’t disappoint, and I thank Ellie for being there with me, our friendship having grown from teenage days spent in and out of Aberdeen pubs and venues with ‘underage’ stamps boldly emblazoned on the back of our hands and eyeliner scrawled around our eyes. Ellie forever introduces me to new music and she’s in on the “let’s just get out and about and see what happens” attitude I’m trying to channel. We’re off to see a French group called Juniore tomorrow through in Glasgow and I’ve been listening to them non-stop for days. Fem, French, indie pop, 1960s vibes…what’s not to like?

Finally, I’ve taught music lessons at school; successful, engaging, interesting music lessons with my class, another bow to my string of teaching every subject and teaching them well. Okay, I put that pressure on myself, no one is good at everything, but music is my thing, and I want that to come across. So, long may it continue.

In conclusion, the “experiment” was a success, and continues to be so. Skip out all the above if needs be, it worked. Re-visiting a neglected passion has enriched my life and in less than a year I’ve had so many positive experiences that it’s good to stop and take note of them. Life is for living, love and joy and you’ve reminded me so.

Thanks, as ever,  tumblr_okojqmVsLk1qj60rgo1_1280

Love Carolyn. x

 

Love Letter

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Dear Music,

Where are you in my life?

I’m writing to you sitting on my sofa following weeks of concentrated mulling and musings, tentative discussions with friends and family, and a longstanding sense of longing which has culminated in this outward expression to you for help.

Music, I feel so disconnected. There was a time when going out to local venues and planning trips to concerts and festivals was my world; I met friends and familiar faces, I felt part of something, my perception of the comings and goings around me heavily influenced by the tunes which I listened to and that I shared with others.

There was a time when I would have said that a similar music taste was the most important thing I would have looked for in a relationship with another person; whether platonic or romantic, a shared interest in albums and lyrics frequently sparked what at the time were such deep and meaningful conversations, and some of the bonds I made with friends were established, solidified and have continued to stand the test of time based in and around a shared interest in music.

However, Music, I feel like we haven’t been on the same level in quite some time.

I don’t blame you, this is all on me; I made way for other priorities to the point that gradually the threads which had woven back and forth between us became dusty and slack from neglect. I can trace back to when it happened, when I no longer felt the influence of friends, romantic attachments, boyfriends, or the current trend in the scene. I can identify key stages in the development and evolution of my music interest and taste, but also the warning signs for where it all started to get a little lost and lacking.

Don’t get me wrong Music, you have always been and do continue to be part of my life, but I just feel like I’ve allowed this relationship to become predictable and unadventurous. I’m sorry.

No one is really to blame. The introduction of online streaming was, I’ll admit, a significant factor in changing our relationship. I pretty much stopped buying hard copies of CDs and iTunes gradually stopped being able to compete and took a back seat to the oh so alluring appeal of free music available on demand. It’s all become to easy, I’ve been lulled into thinking this has been a positive progression, and it’s not, our relationships has lost it’s meaning don’t you think? You may be strangely pleased to know that I do not however pay for the privilege of accessing tracks offline, any time any place, but continue to be loyal to my trusty iPod Classic when I’m out and about, with its 160 GB of storage space that is almost full but rarely updated in the past 3 years. In my car, it’s as if things are frozen in time between us, since this is the only place where I can listen to the CDs I keep in a box under my bed.

So, the music which I listen to daily is either stuck in the recent past or recommended by an online system based on a record of my online listening history (creepy). None of this I think is conducive to a healthy, adult, evolving relationship with you Music, in the here and now.

What should I do? How can we reconnect?

The first step was admitting there is a problem, and I think for me it is a problem, because, I miss you. So, acknowledging the problem has led to finding the words to share my feelings about this and seek help from friends and family alike. I have an action plan now, because I want to be more present with you, I want to feel that you have more of an importance in my life and for this, I need to get out there more, I need to find ways to be involved. Step away from the passive relationship with the background noise and playlists created by someone else, some place else, and uploaded for all to dip into but never really engage with. Seek out the new; new albums to listen to from start to finish and then repeat, new experiences at gigs and venues and discover what’s happening in and around where I live, be part of the community and make connections. I used to take on the world like this, and I need to remember how excellent this was and how it made me feel.

I will be better.

Love, Carolyn

P.S I may write to you again and tell you how I’ve been getting along, so watch this space.

Something To Say

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I haven’t written anything in a long time, other than a few letters to friends, and I despair slightly at my lacking correspondence because I can do better.

My lapse in creative writing could be put down to a new job, new town, new flat, “new chapter”…all excusable reasons not to write as much as they are possible experiences for which reflections and musings could flourish. Nevertheless, despite the intention to establish a “work life balance”, a feat which I have achieved to some extent, creative expression has been limited to lesson planning, setting up and reshuffling a classroom, and that one workshop I went to last month.

My dear Suzy has been writing with such a voracity and inspired fervour that on reading I came to the realisation that I had to take a step back from the “9-5” and take a leaf out of my little global adventurers book; I am starting to put pen to paper again!

I’ve dug out my notebook, filling up since we started this shared blog with sparks of ideas and opening sentences of stories which were left unfinished and as yet unpublished. Reading back over the pages, I can hear my voice in the words written down and I can feel to some extent the memory of the feelings I was trying to get across; confusion, admiration, love and friendship. But where to begin today? What do I want to write about/what do I actually feel like writing about?

Since this is a blog that I share with my great friend Suzy, it seems wise to think about what I want to tell Suzy. In the past, in fact occasionally even still, I would pour my heart out in a long-winded stream of consciousness scrawled on paper and send it off to Switzerland stamped and addressed, leaving me to patiently wait the response. Every thought that came to mind, stories about people I knew and what we were all up to, peppered with all manner of “girl talk” in the mix to make it interesting. So, I guess I could start by saying something suitable dramatic and loaded with gossip and intrigue:

Well Suzy, I’ve met someone new…

They say that when you’re not expecting it, that’s when it happens. I’ve always been sceptical of this phrase, it seems too neat and glib, and I still remain unconvinced by most sayings that start with “they say that…” But anyway, yeh, I’ve met someone when I was just out and about living life. I went to a gig with a friend, and danced, and met their friend and we got along pretty well. Simple as that, it was easy, relaxed and fun; there wasn’t lightning bolts and nervous chatter (much) but we have common interests and plenty to say. 

It might come to nothing, a few dates and shared moments, back and forth text messages before one or the other of us fades and it comes to a natural end before it’s really begun. But that isn’t the attitude now is it? I should just feel the feelings, delight in the possibility of romance and enjoy the opportunities for these exciting possibilities to playout. That’s the way to do it, be optimistic and pull down the little bricks we build up around ourselves when life nudges us a little in the ribs; go with it, and let the good times roll in. Why not eh? It might even get beyond the first date, a fabulous one at that, and then where will we be?

If this were a handwritten letter to Suzy, I would go into every detail of the meeting…who said what…the what, where, when of the date etc. However, this is not a handwritten letter sent from one friend to another, and there are plenty things that should be kept between friends and not shared on the internet.

Bittersweet

Thoughts on finishing one book and moving on to the next…

It’s not me, it’s you; it’s time to call it a day.
At the edge of one relationship and not quite ready for the next,
Caught on the cusp of sadness and anticipation.

Wistfully remembering the little details which unfolded on the pages,
Yet glancing guiltily over to the other side of the bed,
The next adventure winking, waiting to whisk me away.

Tenatatively, I’m letting go of the familiar script.
The intoxication, the polluting tendrils of a fiction which blurred reality,
Mirrored, distorted and reimagined chapters of my own life story.

I’m losing a friend, breaking things off with a lover,
Time has run its course and we push forward.
There are so many other possibilities waiting to tempt me.

Will the next one live up to the last?

Little Trinkets

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Four objects sit to my left on the desk beside me whilst I write this, collected from their various places of safe keeping and display in my bedroom and precious to me more for their sentimental than monetary value; the best of things so often are.

img_0190The first, a small cigarette tin which I’m told my mum used to keep her chalks in at school. I like things in a particular place, sometimes in an intentional, seemingly haphazard arrangement reminiscent of an antique emporium filled with second-hand fripperies.

At one stage in my life I lived in higgledy piggledy house and the bedroom which I occupied was a later addition to the original space, squeezed in between the ground and first floor with the staircase wrapping round it. It was a cheap and cheerful living in a cupboard under the stairs just like Harry Potter. In my little room I could touch the ceiling with my hands above my head and just below ceiling height was a little shelf on which I kept all my favourite little items and books including my little red and gold cigarette tin.

Fond memories of this mildly impoverished stage in my life are still shared with my old housemate and friends that witnessed firsthand the eccentric details of the whole place. I see that little room, and relive moments of that time in my life often, the memories woven into stories of mad working hours, late nights and early mornings up to all sorts of capers.

img_0191The hip flask and silver match case were leaving presents from work colleagues and my darling friend A. a couple of years ago before I flew off to the other side of the world. Drinking paraphernalia made quite fitting gifts for our little work family unit, saying something quite telling about the way we passed our time on a day-to-day basis, and I carried these two keepsakes with me to Australia and back again.

Recent binge watching of the TV series ‘Peaky Blinders’ made me polish up my hipflask a few days ago after sighting a similar one being passed around by the 1920s mob of troublemakers and gorgeously stylish bad boys of Birmingham. Next time I’m out with A. I must remember to take it with me, top it up with something potent and share a wee nip together.

img_0192Finally, on the first day of postal service for the new year I received a belated Christmas present from K. all the way from Morocco. She knows how much I love to send and receive letters and must have read my mind from afar when working in Marrakesh because she sent me a beautiful silver letter opener. I love it. It’s just the sort of thing I would choose for myself and put it straight to use the following day to swish open a letter from Suzy.

A Little Thought

9be1d65047e3ecad604a30784be44507I received your letter today and you’re right friend, our blog has been ‘napping’ and our brains have been doing the exact opposite. A number of times over the past months since I last posted I have felt that I should be writing something, yet I couldn’t find the words to form a suitably coherent line of thought on the page that didn’t concern itself with my studies or the weighty contemplations that come with seeing in another year.

But it’s okay to have taken the time away from writing; if you can’t get the words out, that’s okay, leave it to one side and come back to it another time.  Saying that, a few ideas have come to mind recently since I took a break from student teacher demands and shut the books away for a couple weeks and I hope to make something of them before my focus is drawn in and it all begins again next week.

So in preface to those posts, here’s what I’ve been listening to today :

London Grammar: Rooting for You

Hall & Oates: I Can’t Go For That

Earth, Wind & Fire: Shining Star

 

 

What Does It Even Mean?

I saw a clip today whilst procrastinating and scrolling through the realms of misspent time on social media and it made me smile with such intensity I was near tears.

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It made me want to raise a fist and exclaim:  “yes, go you! This girl is on to it!” because I so admire her honest, youthful feminist attitude to gender stereotyping and how they explicitly affect her at such a young age. Daisy hits the nail on the head when she says: ‘Everyone thinks girls should just be pretty, and boys should just be adventurous…I think this is wrong, why should boys and girls clothes even be separated because we’re just as good as each other?’ Amen sister.

Where the boys’ slogan on a tshirt reads “Think Outside The Box” and the girls’ tshirt reads “Hey” Daisy doesn’t even know what sort of inspiration she as a young girl is supposed to get from wearing a tshirt with the slogan “hey”:  ‘What is that even supposed to mean…I don’t get it…what does it inspire you to do?’

My favourite part of the clip is where we see young activist Daisy with sheer joy, giggles and silliness take a stand against the separation of the clothes in the supermarket: ‘I want to be adventurous, and I think girls want to be heroes so I’m going to put them (the tshirts) in the girls section’ and off she goes; so bold, high-five Daisy.

Seeing such a reaction in a young girl is such a wonderful way to engage people in thinking about how we raise our children and the accepted labels and expectations we have for our boys and girls.

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I’m reading a book that I picked up on a little bookshop in London on my birthday by Irish writer Emer O’Toole titled ‘Girls Will Be Girls: Dressing Up, Playing Parts and Daring to Act Differently ’. This book caught my attention in the same way this clip has done so today, and both are adding to the development of my own views on gender and exploring what it means to ‘act like a girl’. I think it is very important for me to think about this not only on a personal level as a woman in the twenty first century but also the impact that my attitudes towards gender and equality will equate in my professional practice as a teacher.

‘Captain Fantastic’

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To watch the trailer for ‘Captain Fantastic’ having seen the film last night, I am reminded of the poignant beauty of the endeavour which Ben Cash (Viggo Mortensen) and his wife set out to accomplish by raising their family off-grid and by a very different set of rules which challenge twenty-first century Western sensibilities. The film is raw and thought provoking, it nods to the human darkness and the teetering knife edge of sanity (a nod to the mother’s bipolar disorder) and crafts a tale of independent, stripped back to nature life where a father is raising his children to be “philosopher kings”. Ben Cash is either “the best father in the world or the worst” and both are possibilities as the film unfolds and we watch as the ideologies and honest truths of the Cash family life are challenged by necessary and unavoidable clashes with modern social norms and expectations.

Love and the extremities to which man will go to cultivate and defend what he believes to be right and important are central to this film. The children are raised to fend and fight for themselves, their thinking is informed and highly intelligent because they are challenged and engaged, reading Middlemarch and discussing Marxism and Noam Chomsky round the fire at night. We really see their natural spiritedness through their creativity and musicality where in one particularly poignant scene the family sing and dance around a funeral pyre on a cliff top to celebrate life, death, and love.

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The film is soulful but also grates on you, you leave feeling divided about Cash’s parenting and the extent to which his love and determination borders manic extremism and potentially abusive situations, such as creating a ‘mission’ for the family to “free the food” from a supermarket; things are unravelling at the seams and the Cash family way of life entirely is called into question during the whole film. Is Ben Cash and the children’s sense of reality skewed, or are we as an audience being asked to wonder what makes our accepted social reality ‘the right way’ to view the world?

‘Captain Fantastic is not a sugary sweet ‘hippie’ tale of peace, love, and harmony and I think that the writer/director Matt Ross thoughtfully explores the adventure and possibility that life can take you on. The film is an exposition of the extent to which one can truly remove oneself from social norms and yet see the bigger picture and relate to world as a whole through negotiation and open mindedness of what is right.

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I left the cinema with divided sympathies and my head a whirr of thought and wonder. ‘Captain Fantastic’ reminded me of people I met and befriended living in Byron Bay, Australia where many people choose to try to live off grid and ‘alternative’ lifestyles. The culture-clash when I first encountered some of the people in this hippie paradise subsided when I let my guard down and stopped feeling like I had to defend myself and the way that I knew life to be. In opening my mind to other ways of educating oneself and of interacting with the world, I took in new perspectives and had a re-think, which I know was a very healthy and beneficial process to go through.

When watching ‘Captain Fantastic’ I smiled thinking of my barefooted bohemian friends.  The film struck my fancy on first glance not only because it reminded me of people and ways of life which I came across whilst living in Australia, but also because of my current position at the beginning of my teacher training and the insight it gave into childhood, education, and the wonderful hope for raising children to take on the world as “philosopher kings”, bringing power to the people and sticking it to the man.

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Hello You

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‘One inspirational letter can change your life forever.’

Well that’s something I can certainly stand behind.

 It’s no secret that I have an active enthusiasm for the written word, and written correspondence by letter is right up there amongst the favourites. It was much joy that I came across another avid epistolarian, and Jodi has taken her passion one step further by engaging in an letter-writing drive.

Browsing through the latest issue of ‘Oh Comely’–‘Issue 32 in which we talk about letters’-this one had me at hello- I earmarked an article titled ‘Dear Stranger’ about author and poet Jodi Ann Bickley’s project: ‘One Million Lovely Letters’.

To summarise, finding herself swallowed up in darkness whilst suffering from meningoencephalitis (Google was required) Jodi thought of others who were similarly losing themselves. She decided to set up a website, send messages out to the world via Twitter: ‘I’m going to write you a letter…just to make the day a bit better or to remind you of the bloody amazing stuff about you you’ve forgotten.’ Overnight she received two hundred responses from strangers, and Jodi responded to these individually with much care and attention. The project has expanded and unique, thoughtful letters are sent and received across the world by Jodi and her team at ‘One Million Lovely Letters’.  Jodi has even brought out a book with the same title to tell her story, and I have just added it to my online “shopping cart”.

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We’re the same age, Jodi and I, and that caught my attention on top of the subject matter of the magazine article. We are two individuals, strangers to one another with a shared appreciation for letter writing and understanding of the subtle power which one small gesture can have for the life of someone just at that right moment in time.

This morning I wrote my own contribution to Jodi’s project and future exhibition. Encouraged by the invitation at the end of the ‘Oh Comely’ article: ‘something which would make a stranger’s day’,  I sat down with a cup of tea and put pen to paper to scroll out three pages to someone, anyone. I wonder where it will end up. I included a letter for Jodi herself full of praise and enthusiasm, because she should know she’s doing something really inspirational.

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For anyone else who might want to take part, you can find more information about ‘One Million Lovely Letters’ here.

And of course, I wouldn’t even know anything about the project without the article by Lottie Storey in ‘Oh Comely’ magazine, and their website can be found here.

“…when I’m letter writing it feels a little bit like magic”.