Here are some excerpts of the songs which were played in The Stroud House Gallery Exhibition alongside her current artwork. The lyrics and tunes are written, sung and played by the artist who views them very much as part of her artistic practice.
The song titles are listed here together with a bit about them as described by Eleanor.
The Soothing of The Soul
I sang this song at a recent Geopoetics weekend on the Isle of Luing and was told that the song fitted perfectly into the precepts of Geopoetics. Having read something now about the Geopoetics movement I can see where they are coming from. However the song remains highly personal.
The Snark
This is a light hearted song springing very much from the Clyde vernacular atmosphere. I was first prompted to write it out of the sheer enjoyment of the wee ferry which criss-crosses the Clyde between Helensburgh, Kilcreggan and Gourock. She’s a gorgeous craft - curvaceous and varnished, with flags and lots of brass fittings. She is actually called The Kennilworth, which, as far as names go, is not actually a gift to poets. So I called the song The Snark – a very similar craft which plies the beat when The Kennilworth is off for a refit.
Sadly in February of this year 2007 The Kennilworth was pensioned off in favour of the introduction of a more user friendly ferry with more facilities for the disabled. Obviously this is a good thing for safety and accessibility, the only reason I say “sadly” is that her aesthetics are lost to us now on the Clyde and I, for one, shall greatly miss her.
Celerity
I lived on Hoy in the Isles of Orkney in the Winter, Spring and Summer of 1981 and during my stay a boat called Celerity from Buckie was lost on the Pentland Firth. This is my response to this nautical tragedy. The words “No Fancy Regiment” came from a poem published in the Lifeboat Magazine shortly after the Longhope lifeboat disaster of 17th March 1969 as a tribute to the men who lost their lives in that particular tragedy.
Dry Land
This song opens with a long list of the names of the boats which have been berthed in Kilkeel and Annalong harbours at various times over the past hundred or so years. Our family used to go down to the harbour on a Friday night to witness the bustle of the return of the trawlers and the unloading of the catch.
The Gold Seeker was a two masted schooner skippered by William James Caren. William James became master of The Gold seeker in 1926. He retired from the sea in 1945 and many years later sailed with leisure yachtsmen including my own father who learned invaluable amounts about the art of sailing from William James. Incidentally William James’ grandfather Captain John Caren is the man whose picture appears on the Skippers Sardines tin.
William James snored really loudly – a weakness which my father was pleased to thole because of the kindness of the old man and his generosity with his nautical knowledge.
He had one bad leg and one good leg. This was the unfortunate result of riding out a bad storm in The Gold Seeker on the Irish Sea. The storm raged for two days and two nights and William James ran the vessel before the wind, trusting his helming only to his own hand. The weather was foul with rain as well as wind and one of the skipper’s sea boots had a hole in it. So the bad leg resulted from being badly chilled throughout the experience as a result of the continuous flooding in of fresh cold water. The other boot, on the other hand – or foot in this case – was kept wet but warm as the water was trapped in the boot and warmed up a little.
The chorus of this song provides a steady backdrop of one type of the fishing town’s history against the tumult of the verses which tell of a more turbulent history on land.
On this evening while I write this song description (8th May 2007) I am moved by the events of recent days where Dr Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness have been voted in by the people of Northern Ireland to share the political power of the province. I am reminded that both the rituals of the chorus and of the verses of this song represent some kind of journey. The repetition, reminiscent of peregrination, pilgrimage, the vicious and virtuous circle are all caught up in the circular motion of the song.