Don’t Look Away

June 17, 2018June 17, 2018 Daniel KellyLeave a comment

Surely this is the tipping point.

This is it, the step too far, the final act that exposes the monster and the fraud.

We cringed when he was caught out bragging about grabbing women. We gritted our teeth when he appointed a series of incompetent staff to key appointments in the White House. When he put the oil barons in charge of environmental protection we gasped in horror.

When his children and in-laws began representing the country in roles they were in no way qualified to fill, we cried ‘nepotism’ and nodded wisely.

When he started methodically destroying relations with all of America’s allies, while simultaneously making friends with the most brutal dictator in the world, we stared at our screens in confusion.

As I watched the news report speaking about young children being torn from their mothers at the US border and put in detention where they are not provided with any emotional support, I thought “finally, he has gone too far”.

The picture in this article from the Independent is all you need to see. If your heart breaks and you get choked up with anger and fear and despair, then you are still human. If you don’t, then I don’t know what you have become, or what society or race you are part of.

Jacob Soboroff from MSNBC gives this report of the conditions inside the camp housing the 10-17 year old boys. More disturbing still is the report made by Colleen Kraft at the detention centre where younger children are being held. The rules mean that children as young as two cannot be touched, cannot be give the most basic symbol of human compassion that every child should be given at every difficult moment of their life.

I remember the first day I dropped my twins at child care when they were almost three. My wife and I stopped in the baby room and saw a distressed child, around 12 months old, crying. Even though this wasn’t my child, it hurt terribly, sharing in the fear and despair emanating from this young soul. Scientists know the value of human touch during early development. I don’t for a second judge those parents who need to work two jobs just to keep the family fed, and I am very grateful that my own circumstances mean that all of our children have being at home with one parent full-time until at least two. The long term impact on these children in America, who have been taken from their parents for no good reason, will be severe and long-term.

Worst of all, Jeff Sessions had the unbelievable arrogance and bigotry to quote the Bible in support of this despicable action. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, doesn’t come from the Bible, it comes from human values. One of the most fundamental and widely worshiped human values is the bond between mother and child.

I can’t do much, but I can write songs, so here is my contribution to fighting this latest chapter in the Trump disaster novel. Please don’t look away, stare evil in the eye, recognize it for what it is, and fight it with whatever peaceful means you have.

All the Poetry

May 21, 2018 Daniel KellyLeave a comment

In the course of wanting access to all of Cicely Fox Smith’s poems, I had to join AllPoetry.com and submit a piece of my own work.

Once I had access to more of the 600 poems that Cicely wrote, I was able to add this song to my collection of her poems that I have put to a tune. It is probably a little overly romantic in its view of the sailor’s life, but still a beautiful poem. Cicely’s allusion to watery worlds orbiting distant stars was incredibly imaginative for her time.

I have found AllPoetry to be an interesting platform in the way it forces users to comment on other peoples work before posting new poems of your own. Something similar runs on r/OCPoetry but this site is much prettier and the process for commenting far easier to use.

The discussion on the poems I have written in the past but posted in other places before prompted me to think a little more about poems as a form, rather than song. Here is the result of my musings on the recent eruption in Hawaii. Having visited Oahu on many occasions, I am fascinated by the way vibrant life is intermingled with such colossal destruction.

The Building Blocks

What strange contrivance of space-time created this selection of atoms?
How did the primordial plasma soup settle on the Hydrogen atom,
or its twin Helium as the start of the puzzle.

Why was Carbon so perfect a thread to weave into flesh, vine and moss?
Why not Boron or Flourine to fashion this cornucopia of life.

How did this jumble of bits manifest into the sunset over a snow-caped mountain?
Or the distraught child in his bombed-out Syrian ghetto.

Are we just the palette of some inter-dimensional artist?
Slapped on the canvas of the cosmos with care or indifference as the mood dictates.

What cosmoses float in the eternal ether made of different stuff?
A few more quarks in the Iron, a little less neutrinos in an Oxygen atom.

How can humanity walk through this reality without being stunned,
by the complex intricate nature of this star-stuff we exist in.

Ballad Analysis · Blog Post

Nine Tailors make a Man

May 7, 2018 Daniel KellyLeave a comment

In the New York Times, on 10 December 1904, can be found a letter to the editor arguing over the origins of the phrase ‘Nine Tailors make a Man’, which was obviously in common currency at that time. The correspondent refutes an explanation that a wealthy merchant had nine tailors painted on the door of his wagon in thanks for their work and offers the suggestion that he had heard as a young boy in Scotland that Queen Elizabeth had gathered nine tailors to represent the Tailors’ Guild of the City of London to advise her on a policy issue.

Evidently the New York Times had forgotten its own backlog because it published a letter to the editor of the London Spectator on September 9 in 1882 where the correspondent corrects a review of ‘Harry Erskine and His Times’ by stating that the origin of the saying is ‘Nine Talers (tellers) make a Man’ referencing the custom where the church bell is always rung nine times when a man is buried (one for an infant, three for a girl and six for a women). This incidentally answers a question I had about the lines in The Magpie linking events to numbers.

What started all this? Well the long-form (Nobel Peace Prize nominated) journalist, Ethan Gutmann, chose a recording of Benjamin Bowmaneer to open his new podcast, The Gutmann Report. The ballad, Roud #1514, is also known by The Prancing Tailor or Benjamin Bowman / Bowlabags / Bolibus / Bolderman. The recording chosen was the one made in 1971 by The New Golden Ring, a folk group I had never heard of, but their two albums Five Days Singing Volume I & II are pretty good.

So when I did my own recording of this ballad, I had already heard Kate Rusby’s version, however, as any fans of Kate will know, her voice is so strikingly beautiful that sometimes you forget what she is singing about. When I actually looked at the lyrics I realised that they make no sense. First I thought it was a song about a war with the French, or maybe a reference to Reepicheep from Narnia or Despereaux Tiling with all the thimbles and needles.

Some trawling of the Mudcat threads here and here indicated that the song had something to do with a prevailing view that Tailors were not manly, and thus the butt of several songs and stories making fun of this perception. The Trooper and the Tailor is one example, which reminds me of Alistair Hulett’s Tinker in the Lum. Evidently, cuckholding was a national sport in England. The Butcher and the Tailor’s Wife paints the Tailor with worse cowardice as he gives up his wife at the first threat to his person. This theme reminded me of the excellent story arc of Mr Gold (Rumpelstiltskin) in the psycho-drama disguised as a children’s story, Once Upon a Time.

So is the version of the story in question, Benjamin Bowmaneer, just a case of making fun of Tailors because they pretend that killing a flea (or louse or mouse) is brave sport? There is another interesting aspect to this song, and it is related to the story that Malcom Douglas relays in this Mudcat thread. It could just be one of many fanciful ‘collection’ stories used to justify insertion of songs into books, but the story goes that Mary Spence’ great aunt heard a traveling tailor singing the song around 1804 and memorised it.

This could well be an example of the folk process, with misheard lyrics accounting for the un-intelligible lyrics of the song version in question. Some key phrases that have alternatives in Malcom’s post of The Proud Tailor.

The Proud Tailor Benjamin Bowmaneer

How the world began                                                   How the war began
Nine Tailors make a man                                         England fought to a man
Low cast away                                                               Castors away

Unfortunately I don’t have a way to decide which is the original and which is the poorly heard copy, except that The Proud Tailor was collected around 1928 and Benjamin Bowmaneer was published in 1959 but probably collected well before that.

From Hester Burton’s 1962 book, Castor’s Away!, about the battle of Trafalgar, and the fact that a beaver is also called a castor, it is likely that the line in the Benjamin Bowmaneer version is probably the correct (original) one. However, if the practice of throwing your beaver hat into the air was particularly nautical, why would the reference appear in a song about a tailor? It seems this ballad just keeps asking more questions than it asks. I haven’t even looked at why there are more than six different surnames starting with B for Benjamin.

In any case, it was a pleasant song to sing and as long as you can get past occupation stereotyping, the lyrics have a certain mysterious quality to them.

(image from the British Museum – Creative Commons)

Blog Post · My Own Music

Zombie Sheep of the Murrumbidgee

April 9, 2018 Daniel KellyLeave a comment

Now that I have finished writing 11 song about the distant and recent history of Yass, in New South Wales, Australia, I want to make them into an album.

All my previous albums have been digital-only, due to the prohibitive cost of producing albums and the low likelihood of ever selling the 300 minimum run.

I am making my first foray into crowd funding, to see if enough people will pre-order an album to make the production worthwhile.

You can listen to the rough take of all the songs here.

If you like the music, and can afford to buy an album, please consider supporting the Pozible campaign below:

Ballad Analysis · Blog Post · Folk Music · Lyrics and Chords · Poetry · Spirituality and Philosophy

The Stolen Rhyme

February 9, 2018 Daniel Kelly4 Comments

I have always loved the haunting ethereal beauty of Loreena McKennitt’s setting of William Butler Yeat’s poem, The Stolen Child, to music. I tried to practice singing the song before doing this recording for my YouTube channel, but even after 4-5 days I just couldn’t get the verses to flow.

This fired my curiosity, and so I looked a little deeper into the structure of the poem. For reference, here is the complete poem:

The Stolen Child – W.B. Yeats, 1886

    Where dips the rocky highland
    Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
    There lies a leafy island
    Where flapping herons wake
    The drowsy water rats;
    There we’ve hid our faery vats,
    Full of berry
    And of reddest stolen cherries.
    Come away, O human child!
    To the waters and the wild
    With a faery, hand in hand.
    For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

   Where the wave of moonlight glosses
    The dim grey sands with light,
    Far off by furthest Rosses
    We foot it all the night,
    Weaving olden dances
    Mingling hands and mingling glances
    Till the moon has taken flight;
    To and fro we leap
    And chase the frothy bubbles,
    While the world is full of troubles
    And is anxious in its sleep.
    Come away, O human child!
    To the waters and the wild
    With a faery, hand in hand,
    For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

   Where the wandering water gushes
    From the hills above Glen-Car,
    In pools among the rushes
    That scarce could bathe a star,
    We seek for slumbering trout
  And whispering in their ears
    Give them unquiet dreams;
    Leaning softly out
    From ferns that drop their tears
    Over the young streams.
    Come away, O human child!
    To the waters and the wild
    With a faery, hand in hand,
    For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

    Away with us he’s going,
    The solemn-eyed:
    He’ll hear no more the lowing
    Of the calves on the warm hillside
    Or the kettle on the hob
    Sing peace into his breast,
    Or see the brown mice bob
    Round and round the oatmeal chest.
    For he comes, the human child,
    To the waters and the wild
    With a faery, hand in hand,
    For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.

I realised that what was causing me the problem is that the length of verse and rhyming pattern within the last lines of each verse is not consistent. Note the rhyming structure in the first verse:

Where dips the rocky highland, Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island, Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats; There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berry, And of reddest stolen cherries.

Yet in the next stanza we have:

Where the wave of moonlight glosses, The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses, We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances, Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight; To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles, While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.

There are an extra three half-lines, and their rhyming doesn’t fit the model. Verse three is similarly muddled, yet verse four goes back to the structure of the first verse.

As a ballad singer, I am acutely conscious of the way that repetition in metre and rhyme makes it much easier to memorise and perform songs. I imagine that William B. Yeats would have been very familiar with the work of the Irish Bards and the use of this style of verse.

It could just be that this poem is intended to be read, not sung, and the discontinuity was intended as part of the work. However, the confusion goes beyond just the rhyme structure. The third verse is about gushing water, which seems to align with the ‘frothy bubbles’ in verse two. This phrase appears to be out of place in verse two, which is about pagan dances in the moonlight.

Yeats purists will probably chide me, but in my ballad version I have restructured the verses so that they are all four line stanzas with a repeated rhyming structure. So verses two and three become:

Where the wave of moonlight glosses the dim grey sands with light
By far off furthest rosses we foot it all the night
Weaving olden dances, mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight To and fro we leap

Where the wandering water gushes from the hills above Glen-Car
In pools among the rushes that scarce could bathe a star
We seek for slumbering trout, leaning softly out
Hoping to find Fintan, knowledge for to gain

From ferns that drop their tears, over the young streams
And whisper in their ears, giving them unquiet dreams
And stir the frothy bubbles, whilst the world is full of troubles
Eyes blind but open, and anxious in their sleep.

The bold lines are my own additions. As students of Irish mythology will know, Fintan is the Salmon of Knowledge. I immediately thought of this on first reading of the verse about tickling trout. I have moved the ‘frothy bubbles’ to the line about streams. Interestingly, there was a note with the published version of this poem, indicating that there is a place in The Rosses where those who lay down to sleep may have their souls stolen by the fairies.

This site has a beautiful photo of the waterfall at Glen-Car. It is definitely the type of place in which one could imagine the fairy folk coming to visit. Yeats would have visited this site in his childhood.

On this lovely site there is a story about using the starlight reflected in forests pools to create powerful wands.

A review of the huge tome of work that Yeats has left us here, will show that he was both very well read and from his work A Vision, he was no stranger to the mystic arts. I wonder what other messages he hid in this and other works.

Ballad Analysis

William’s Razor – Yass History

February 4, 2018January 13, 2021 Daniel Kelly3 Comments

As a lover of ballads it is always exciting when you can pair a particular place and time with a ballad that has been circulating for 100 years or more. I had been singing Mary from Dungloe for many years without realising that Mary was a real person, who had left Ireland for New Zealand just as my ancestors had in the 1800s.

In this particular instance the reverse has occurred. I was inspired to write this ballad after reading the story in a local newspaper from 9^th January 1864. The full story is available here, which is actually a re-print of the story in the Melbourne Leader. The original story from the Yass Courier was syndicated all over the country (maybe even back to England).

To summarise, William Williams, a plasterer who had only been in the town of Yass for ‘some months’, attempted to kill a seventeen year old girl and, failing this, attempted to cut his own throat. The incident was triggered, it seems, by the refusal or postponement of a marriage proposal. To me, this story had all the required components for a great folk ballad, and knowing the incident had occurred less than 1 kilometre from our house, along the river which we walk by every few days, made it all the more fascinating.

As a person who likes a puzzle, I was also intrigued to learn the identity of the young girl and the final fate of William William’s.

The area around Yass was first settled in 1830 and the town itself was gazetted in 1837. In 1848 there were 55 houses and 274 people living in the town. The Australian Handbook, printed in 1888, indicates that the population had risen to 2370 by that time. In any case, there cannot have been more than a handful of 17 year old girls in the town in 1846.

The following clues are found in the primary article about the incident:

On Sunday (3 Jan) William and the girl walked by the Yass River, where on discussion about the postponement of the engagement, William produces a razor and threatens to harm himself. The girl grabs the razor from him and throws it in the river.
On Monday (4 Jan) the two talk at the girl’s married sister’s house. William leaves to go to his lodging at a nearby public house.
The girl retires in a room at the back of her sister’s house which has a half-glass door. William comes to her room after she is asleep, claiming he cannot get into his room at the public house. She refuses entry but gives him a blanket and key to the kitchen (a detached building).
William leaves (in his work clothes), towards the river, saying he will drown himself.
William returns when the girl and her sister have gone back to sleep in his Sunday clothes with a new razor. He breaks into the room, wakening the girl.
William says he has come to murder her first and then kill himself.
The girl screams for her sister, who is in a parallel bedroom.
William grabs her by the neck, with the razor in his other hand.
The girl’s sister opens the door to the parlour and she twists free.
The girl’s sister flees through the front door to fetch their father who lives across the road.
The girl flees into the parlour and gets to the other side of a large table.
William cuts his own throat (evidently missing the carotid arteries) and bleeds all over the kitchen.
The girl runs into the street.
The girl’s sister and father re-enter the house to find William lying on the girl’s bed, still bleeding profusely.
Sub-inspector Brennan and Constable Smith arrive in a few seconds.
Dr O’Connor is sent for and eventually sutures the wound after a struggle.
After hospitalisation, Williams claims to have left a sum of £70 or £80 pounds hidden under a stone by the Yass Bridge.

Initial Deductions

Yass – Town Map, 1898

The Yass Police residence has always been on Rossi Street, next to the Court House. The Rose Inn was built by Isaac Moses in 1837 on Comur Street (also next to the Court House) and is situated between the River and the houses on Rossi Street. The only places close to the Police Station, where there could be two residences across the road from each other would be 3-4 blocks within the intersection of Rossi and Dutton Streets.

It could be concluded that William Williams was staying at the Rose Inn, and that the girl and her sister were staying in a house on Rossi or Dutton Street.

I went through genealogy pages to look for girls who were born in Yass in 1845 or 1846 (would have been 17 in 1864) and cross referenced them with the property owners on Dutton and Rossi Street in 1898.

The only name that stands out is Margaret Carter, born 1846 to Eliza Bowra and James Carter. James was a policeman and owned a property on Rossi Street. Margaret had a sister, Sarah, born in 1843. It is a stretch, but Benjamin Warton, husband of Sarah Warton passed away in 1915 and there is a W. Warton property across the road from the Carter residence in Rossi Street.

I have lived in this town for over ten years, but hadn’t visited the Yass and District Museum. On the weekend I went there to look at some of the paintings and pictures of the town in the 1800s and also look at the build dates of various key buildings in the town. I was also able to take a photo of a razor from the period.

Conclusion

I still need to visit the local archives to make 100% sure, but I am reasonably confident that if any 17 year old girl of Yass in 1864 was going to have the presence of mind to wrestle a razor from a bigger, stronger, man, it is likely to be the daughter of a local policeman, Margaret Carter.

I haven’t been able to track down what happened to her afterwards with any certainty, but now with a name and a birth date, I think it should be possible.

Blog Post · Film, TV and Literature · Spirituality and Philosophy

Dan Brown – Origin – A Guided Tour

December 30, 2017December 30, 2017 Daniel KellyLeave a comment

I have been a big fan of Dan Brown’s books, all the way back to Digital Fortress and Deception Point. Origin, the latest book in the Robert Langdon series, is no exception. Even though the books follow a fairly predictable structure, i.e. “middle aged professor saves the world from a shadowy foe with attractive young woman against backdrop of old buildings and paintings”, I still enjoy them.

What I enjoy most is the way that a crucial real-world question of philosophy, science or religion is woven into what appears on the surface to be a low-reader-investment thriller. With this approach, I think Dan Brown has managed to reach an audience which would otherwise never pick up a book on the ethics of genetic engineering, comparative religious studies, ancient architecture or synthetic intelligence.

I won’t go into the plot here, you should go and read the book yourself. What I did find, was that I was stopping every 10 pages to look up a painting, building or religious cult on the internet. In order to save you some time, I have created a list of links to some of the key elements of the book. Some of them I had heard of before, others were entirely new to me. There are no real spoilers in the list, hopefully it will save you some googling.

One day I hope to make it to Spain to do an Origin tour, as I was able to do in Rome and Washington D.C. focused on the content of Angels & Demons and The Lost Symbol. Let me know what you thought of the book, and if you think I have missed anything.

(this post has no association with Dan Brown or Penguin/Bantam, links are all to external sites)

Works of Art

Yves Klein

Leap into the Void: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1992.5112/

Monotone Silence (nudity): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkHoWUwxEFM&t=5s

Luis Boureois

Maman: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/10856

Richard Serra

The Matter of Time: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/21794

Joan Miro

Signs and Meteors (not specifically mentioned, but Joan is referenced):

https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/8519

Pablo Picasso

El Guernica: http://www.museoreinasofia.es/en/collection/artwork/guernica

Antoni Gaudi

Parc Guell: https://erasmusu.com/en/erasmus-barcelona/what-to-see/parc-guell-1897

La Sopa Primordial: http://www.barcelona-metropolitan.com/features/barcelona-history-underfoot-the-city%27s-tiles/

Paul Gauguin

Where do we come from what are we doing where are we going?:

http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/where-do-we-come-from-what-are-we-where-are-we-going-32558

William Blake

Vala or the Four Zoas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vala,_or_The_Four_Zoas

The Ancient of Days: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ac/Europe_a_Prophecy_copy_K_plate_01.jpg/800px-Europe_a_Prophecy_copy_K_plate_01.jpg

Buildings/Locations

Montserrat

http://www.complexmania.com/montserrat-rack-railway/

Library – http://www.montserratvisita.com/en/culture/montserrat-library

Guggenheim – Bilbao

https://www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/the-building/

Dohany Synagogue in Budapest

360 internal: http://www.synagogues360.org/synagogues.php?ident=hungary_003

Local photos, plus weeping willow sculpture: https://www.budapestbylocals.com/budapest-great-synagogue.html

Catedral de la Almundena

http://www.catedraldelaalmudena.es/imagenes/

Royal Palace of Madrid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Palace_of_Madrid

Palacio de la Zarzuela

https://www.digitalsevilla.com/2017/10/17/alerta-zarzuela/

Szechenyi Chain Bridge

https://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotoDirectLink-g274887-d276821-i124534337-Szechenyi_Chain_Bridge-Budapest_Central_Hungary.html

Basilica of Palmar De Troya

(visit by former nun) http://www.mariahallwriter.com/basilica_visit/

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/El_Palmar_de_Troya.jpg

Casa Mila (by Gaudi)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_Mil%C3%A0

video mentioned in book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utaTcNq2mHs&t=5s

La Basilica De La Sagrada Familia

Must be seen to be believed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lYdrhYYWpg&t=733s

Plan for completion by 2026: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ8NcKNlZzg

El Escorial

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Escorial

Barcelona Supercomputing Center

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/barcelona-supercomputing-center

Valle de los Caidos (Valley of the Fallen)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valle_de_los_Ca%C3%ADdos

Organisations or People

Palmarian Catholic Church:

(totally real) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmarian_Catholic_Church

Spanish Royal Guard

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Royal_Guard

Random Information

What is a Whiffenpoof?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Whiffenpoofs

Symbols of Franco

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbols_of_Francoism

D-Wave (Quantum Computer)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Wave_Two

Miller-Urey Experiment

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment

Blog Post · Film, TV and Literature

Star Wars: The Last Misogynist

December 20, 2017 Daniel Kelly2 Comments

I have been watching the outrage and disappointment being voiced on social media and blogs regarding the latest installment in the Star Wars franchise and want to respond. As our family are long-time fans, since I first saw A New Hope way back in 1977, we all went to see the latest film, The Last Jedi, last week.

Warning: Spoilers there will be.

For me, I thoroughly enjoyed the film, it wasn’t too long, the cinematics were beautiful and it was so great to see Mark Hamill back on the screen with an actual speaking part, it was also bittersweet to see Carrie Fisher on the big screen for the last time. Our 8, 6 and 3 year old boys all made it through the whole film and stayed engaged. My 14 year old twins weren’t as impressed, but I put that down to hormones.

So why so much hate? This Vox article by Todd VanDerWerff provides an excellent summary and even references this petition for those hoping to remove Last Jedi from the Star Wars canon. This Vanity Fair article by Joanna Robinson points to the notable disparity between the critic score, 93%, and the viewer score, 56%. Joanna also summarises what Todd says less clearly, that this negative viewer score is the result of ‘Make America Great Again’ white male misogynists who are angry at the films content.

In the context of the #MeToo phenomena and the spectacular recent fall from power of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Don Bourke (Australian TV), Matt Lauer (see the full list here) it feels like society is experiencing the re-awakening of female power. I can see how generations of men who have gotten away with, and even expected, their right to be in charge and treat women however they feel without consequence, might be feeling a little vulnerable.

The Last Jedi was full of recognition of the capabilities of women. From Rey as heroine, to both Leia and Vice Admiral Holdo as leaders and the addition of Rose Tico (a mechanic, Firefly anyone?). So many stereotypes toppled and paradigms shifted. I can see why this would make many men still living in a chauvinist bubble very uncomfortable.

Some specific elements include Leia and Holdo in their disapproval of young hotshot, Poe’s, aggressive approach to everything. The idea that rationality and wisdom, in the minds of women, is better at winning the day than macho action is repeated several times in the film. It is also shown that despite this tendency for rationality, women are equally capable of taking violent decisive action when the situation requires it.

In the scenes with Rose and Finn, it is Finn that is taking the path of a coward and Rose who surges ahead with confidence, integrity and dedication.

Luke has been sulking for many years over a mistake (a stereotypical male response) and it is Rey who draws him out and back into the fight. Without giving too much away about the final scenes, Luke’s means of defeating the enemy is the ultimate in passivity. Take this a little deeper and realise that throughout Luke’s island tantrum, Leia continued to fight the remnants of the Empire and the rise of the First Order.

I think that what Director, Rian Johnson, has done with Last Jedi is a beautiful addition to the Star Wars cannon, and is an excellent reading of the 2017 zeitgeist.

Slightly off the topic of rectifying the balance in the gender relations, Rian also slips in a bit of timely exposure for arms dealers. In my song Charlottesville, I tried to capture the reality that often in any fight between two parties, there is a third party profiting at no risk to themselves. I wonder who that third party is in the current gender war?

Star Wars related, but off the topic of the film, one of my 12 songs for Christmas this year has a Star Wars theme.

I can’t predict where #metoo is headed, if the views of these bizarre feminists, is anything to go by then nowhere, but I am hopeful, that it is the spark of resistance, that it will lead to balance and mutual respect. Long live the Rebel Alliance!

Blog Post · Poetry

The Tower

December 12, 2017December 14, 2017 Daniel KellyLeave a comment

Standing silent and still,
Steel frame and wires,
Ominous.
A long-dead Christmas Tree,
Baubles of weathered fibreglass,

But your silence is a shroud,
You always speak, share, collect.
Staccato chirping, just beyond human ken.
Passing the fragments of sad existence,
Money, secret love, a family photo,
The blancmange of our lives.

Watching, listening,
Drip feeding the morphine of our stupor,
TV which long since broke with reality.
Carefully manicured data,
constructed for effect,
Twisting and torturing truth.

With a thousand friends,
you stand sentry,
like the guard towers in a
free-range prison.

Blog Post · Film, TV and Literature

An open letter to Joan Baez

November 25, 2017November 25, 2017 Daniel KellyLeave a comment

Dear Ms Baez,

I will start by confessing that in my love for the folk era of the 1960’s I have failed to pay attention to your work, not just as a singer, but as a human being who endeavors to use your skills and resources to make the world a better place.

In my focus on the earnest political (topical) songs of Phil Ochs, the obscure lyricism/mysticism of Leonard Cohen, the brain-splitting poetic scalpel of Bob Dylan, sage wisdom of Pete Seeger and the whimsy of Joni Mitchell, I foolishly passed over you as a beautiful voice alone.

I have been reading your autobiography, And a Voice to Sing With, and while I am only a third of the way through the book, I feel that I can’t hold off on writing this letter.

It is one thing to sing about the problems of the world, but an entirely different thing to put your hand to the wheel and endeavour to generate change. Not just the political style change of ideals and promises, or even the important, but inherently limited, work of treating local symptoms, but the work of seeking to change the psyche that creates inequality and suffering.

Having a tangible hand in the abolition of segregation in the American South and bringing an end to a pointless war in Vietnam are no small achievements.

When I read about your establishment of the Institute for the Study of Nonviolence in 1964, now the Resource Centre for Nonviolence, I see the inspiration and foundation for the way in which the resistance against the violent and pervasive suppression of Falun Gong in China has been conducted.

I am sure that, given your status, you receive many appeals for assistance related to any number of human rights atrocities occurring around the world. Here in Australia we have our very own self-generated crisis in the treatment of refugees on Manus Island and a little further away the terrible abuse of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar. Hopefully you will indulge my efforts to bring this particular situation to your attention, if it has not already been.

I have personally being involved in the effort to work peacefully towards an end to the persecution of Falun Gong since I started the practice myself in 1998, before it was banned in China. The consistent commitment to non-violence in the protest has been adhered to world-wide for 18 years now. This is despite some documented cases of external attempts at infiltration to instigate violence and even violence staged by the Chinese Communist Party.

As a singer/songwriter myself, I started writing songs to try and raise awareness about this issue back in 2003 and finally published them in 2011. Quite a few other people who practice Falun Gong have tried to do the same thing with their music, including The Good Seeds and on a more professional level with Shen Yun performing arts.

I greatly enjoyed your tribute to Donald Trump, it is so inspiring that you have been making a stand in word and deed since all the way back in 1958 when you refused the contrived nuclear fear propaganda. I am so delighted that I picked up your autobiography at the local Book Fair last month, which was, incidentally, raising money for Refugees.

Sincere thanks for your time, and your continuing contribution to our world,

Daniel Kelly