GOGLEDD

Just call me...Mister Hawk.

So, the weekend before last was Grad, and all the grand adventures that were contained therein. Next weekend will be the Doctor's return to our sceptered isle's shores, along with Tommy from Bristol town. This weekend, however, is what can only be described as the most successful family holiday ever. Absolutely splendid...

Now, the last time I went to Wales, it was South Pembrokeshire to Tyddewi, or St. David's. I was meant to go again recently for an audition for a Choral Scholarship at the Cathedral, but I accepted the job at Truro a week before anyway, so that one got knocked on the head. In fact, had we had gone to St. David's we were scheduled to go up and see the rellies, but because I took the Truro job blah blah...

Anyway. Mother decided that it was time to go to Wales, and more specifically, Porthmadog. No, don't pronounce it as a 'g' at the end. Cue my useless protestation. I mean, seriously, I've never met anyone who's there before, I don't know them, I don't know the kids, I don't know if they'll like me, let alone whether I'll like them...

You know what, I had some bloody stupid worries before, but this one takes the biscuit. I've had probably the best weekend of my whole life. Seriously. Aside from the nigh-on five hour journey there, through the windy mountain roads to get there (where surprisingly the only radio station available is BBC Radio 2...?), it was absolutely bloody brilliant! It feels like I actually have a big family, and more importantly, a family who wants to know me. They're all mad (Anty Lou is certifiably insane for starters (but like that's a bad thing)), but they are ours, as much as they're like us, we're like them (more on that at the end). I spent the entire journey back thanking my dearest mother for taking me, and asking her if she was sure we couldn't stay for longer. If we hadn't have run out of clean clothes we wouldn't have come back, and I'm not even joking. Pub be damned, I'd have stayed there for ages.

Anyway. I've managed to be dragged away from Port (and indeed Penryhndeudreath, where I was staying with my COUSIN Lisa), but have managed to import a smattering of the accent. Just a little. Not to mention the speed! You see, I've been at University for three years in Norfolk, (and indeed, surrounded by southeners) and haven't come home with an accent...ever. However, two days in Wales, and I sound like a right Gog! I actually relaxed for a bout the first time ever, basically. THERE WE GO. For saying I met a bunch of people I've never even seen before, and their children (oh, the children...), in a strange place, I actually relaxed, that I could stop being so bloody uptight for a while! Hah! Although mother dear did make an interesting point about cadencing, and me being one of those musician types, that the melodious nature of the Welsh accent and inflections appeals to my nature as a musician (and more properly as a singer, I suppose). I can't stand southern accents, really. I don't care if you have one, in the nicest fashion, but it's not for me.

As ever, I have taken few pictures. It's quite a ball ache trying to get my phone and its associated software to work, especially when I'm very busy having a wonderful time. I can't actually stress how much I enjoyed myself, alright?! There's sufficient record of me being there though, and there is another place that I have promised to return to. I am in some danger of being spread far too thinly, what with my swanky scholarship and promising to be back in Norwich and now Port and Penryhn and I've got to come back home at some point and auditioning for the next place... But a promise made is a promise kept. This is a promise I can make that only relies on myself rather than anything else. Now, here's a little real-time development, for those of you who do not believe that I do these things without drafting, I've just looked up trains from TRU to PTM and PRH (look them up). The quickest is 9 hours, and the rest are about 12. I'll probably try PRH though, as there's only one change, and that's at BHM, so that won't be much of a problem. But seriously, NINE HOURS. Jesus Harry Bicycling Christ. Looks like I need to get in training for that one then!

Anyway, time to wrap this up. I'm still recovering from the last weeked, in fact the one before that was never recovered from properly either, and this one coming will be just as busy, so I'm very tired. Before I go though, allow me to explain to you uninitiates about the title. Welsh is a funny language. It's not like English at all, in fact I rather think it's a surprise that they even share the same alphabet. It is a modern type of celtic language, distantly related to the original language spoken by the inhabitants of the British isles before the dominance of the English language with its Saxon and Roman influences. It is very odd. There are many vowels which English speakers do not recognise and the most stereotypically 'Welsh' sounds, the ll (comparable to the hebraisch "ch" sound) and the dd (compare to the old english letter that looks like a d, the 'eth' (look it up)). I mean...You there! Englishman! Pronounce 'Dolgellau'! W stands for U as much as U stands for I.

As a parting conversation took place, the term 'gog' was introduced. It's a contraction of 'Gogledd', which means 'North' in thw Welsh language, as both a geographical term and a self-recognition of denizens of North Wales and the speakers of the North Welsh dialect and accent. I was told "We are gogs." by one of my cousins. Not "The people round here are gogs." Not "Us lot who live here are gogs." But "We are gogs." Not just those of us who live there, but them who returned to the Midlands on Monday. I am not a Welshman. This much is true. But to have been accepted and welcomed by not only my blood relatives, but their significant others and children as one of them makes me proud and happy and glad and all other sorts of wonderful emotion. I have a family there who want me, and may they also know that I want them as well. I find it massively amusing that I, a northern-sounding speaker of English (even though I come from the midlands yes whatever) have also picked up a northern Welsh accent and inflection.

Anyway, there's an old Chapel going in Penryhndeudreath, and only for 60 Grand. It's there now, so it's bloody tempting, buy a chapel, do it up, install an east end gallery and get a fine Organ on it (III/P, English classical style with chair case but full compass swell with a balanced pedal, great chorus sat on fine open and stopt diapasons with seperate mutations available alongside tierce-mixture and a mounted cornet BUT with a German-inspired separate chorus pedal but voiced together in an Old English style), and stay there. That's nice. I think I might retire in this fashion. It'll give me long enough to have a massively successful career, of course (har har keep trying Peb and you'll be king of the world at this rate) and complete all my studies and earn oodles of monies...so, yes! Not a bad master plan as things go I think.

Splendid.

...Please turn on your magic beam...

I remember when I met Morpheus. I remember where I met Morpheus. I remember how I met Morpheus. Dream, of the Endless.

I'd been interested in joining the Forum Library for a while. The UEA book bunker doesn't to graphic novels, but thankfully their sheet music collection is pretty good. There's an eight shelf island just past the borrowing machines in the Millenium library that's full of graphic novels, trade paperbacks, one-shots and so on. There's also a six shelf island that's full of Manga. Thanks to the library, I've been able to read the entire works of Nemesis the Warlock, several Batman series, Transformers Spotlights and so on and so forth.

One day, I was getting the train. I'd misread the timing and ended up in town an hour early. I don't know how, but I did. This was my second year, mind you, so I was probably just trying to get out of the house. I pulled into the library, and wandered up to the graphic novel island. Skimming across the shelves, I thought it was time to step up to the plate, and picked up Preludes and Nocturnes. This is the first collected volume of Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic. I say comic. I have difficulty in imagining buying Sandman in a monthly format, having never been a big comics buyer anyway. I'd always been afraid of the Sandman series, due to Dave McKean's artwork on the cover. There's nothing really frightening about it all. It's...how do you say, very primal. Raw and genuine. It is fully in control of its own mesmeric power. Anyway. As a child I was scared and intimidated by it, so I stayed well away. Having polished off Grant Morrison's Batman Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, illustrated completely by McKean, I felt more confident, and took the plunge.

As the entire world already knows, Neil Gaiman is one of the most incredible writers ever. As you progress through the narrative, the entire mythology of the Endless is built from the ground up, appearing out of nowhere, an immacualte conception of fantasy. The Endless are...well, they are the personifications of universal ideas. Death, of course, being the most obvious, the end of all things, and Destruction, the personification of energy. The others are immaterial in aspect; Destiny, Despair, Desire and Delerium (formerly Delight). And of course, Dream.

Dream of the Endless, in his guise as Morpheus, the eponymous Sandman. Reading his character description on the most ubiquitous of all internet resources, passages like these leap of the page: "He is sometimes slow when dealing with humor, occasionally insensitive, often self-obsessed, and is very slow to forgive or forget a slight. He has a long history of failed romances...", "...defeated by his most tragic flaw, his inability to accept change..." and from Season of Mists, "accumulating names to himself as others make friends, but he permits himself few friends." I feel very close to dream. I too have more names than I will ever have friends. The only thing that reall seems to change about me is my weight and my appearance. Nothing in my wardrobe screams summer more than my current new taste in Cravats, but seeing as they're just archaic ties, where's the real difference anyway?

Ultimately, Dream is the most human of all the Endless, he is like an everyman. He makes mistakes, he condemns jilted lovers (I mean, who hasn't wanted the other party in an unsuccessful love affair to go to hell? Just sayin'), he has a house and grounds to tend to...kind of like normal people, if normal people were near-omnipotent spectral personifications of concepts. The Sandman series is a journey that we take with Morpheus, hand in hand, where we see these things happen. Where we see him consider the important things. Ultimately he makes a choice, whether to change or not. As he cannot, will not, must not, or crucially chooses not to change, he dies instead. What? Sorry, but I am a living spoiler. Morpheus ceases to be, but Dream does not. You must, dear reader, peruse the 10th book, The Wake, in order to discover what really happens in the end.

I'm sure there are times when anyone who's read Sandman can see a little bit of themselves reflected back at them in the shape of Morpheus; maybe, sometimes its something they don't want to see, and sometimes that's important. Criticism, especially when it comes from within is one of the most important and powerful forces of personal development.

The Wake touches me. It makes me cry. You heard me. It makes me sad in a way that I can't deal with. Maybe it makes me think about my death. But I'm not really worried about dying. I don't particularly wish to die, that much is true, but it comes to us all, and when my time is then my time is up. Like the Big Man, I'm not going until I'm done. But you read Morpheus' Wake and see for yourself. There's a copy in Derby Central, I'm sure they don't have it in Norfolk at all because it's too beautiful.

So go and meet Morpheus for yourself. Make your own mind up. Find him, and maybe he'll find you. Sweet dreams.

...Bring me a Dream...

Funny things, dreams. And I don't mean funny like the preceding post where I talk about having technicolour dreams with force feedback. I mean hopes and dreams, fears and ambitions. I'm really quite the dreamer. I regularly dream when I sleep, and I have a lot of hopes. Many of these come to nothing; the longstanding dream of being able to ask a girl out on a date still escapes me.

One day, a long time ago, it was my foremost hope to move out from house and home and go to university, and get a degree. Now, I'm in the final and most fatal furlong of that journey. One slip now...and I'm done for! Best not slip then, eh? When I was 16, I told myself that I could teach myself to play the Organ. Well, I'm having lessons now on a deeply important and excellent instrument, which truly tests me to the very limits of my admittedly poor technique. A year younger than that, I wanted to play the Upright Bass in my school Swing Band. That came and, because I left school, went, but I still play, and I want to get back to a band. Also, I want to play my Tenor Banjo in a Dixie Band. I'm a rythym section kinda guy. I love it.

But why did I really work up the effort to come to University? It would have been a whole lot easier to have just...not bothered! It's kind of the same thinking behind Lent this year though; I was going to give something up but then I realised I'm not a quitter. ZING.
Unlike what you may think, I didn't come here to get depressed, feel alone or even write a dissertation about Organs, even though I'm doing all of those right now. I came here to sing.

When I was about...I dunno, maybe 9 years old, I decided that I was going to be an Alto. I was a probationer chorister of Derby Cathedral Choir, and I thought that being an Alto was the Bee's knees, not to mention that incredible solo that came around every year, Orlando Gibbons' This is the Record of John. SWEET. I had my heart set on that bad boy. So, when I reach that age in a boy's life (behave, no sniggering at the back) when one's voice changes, I had the summer holiday off and then got straight on to the back row! Pow! Guess what?! BAD IDEA.

I wouldn't say the damage was irrepreble. In fact, nobody has said that. Sometimes it feels that way, but it isn't. I just have a voice which works in a very peculiar way, still quite strong in the upper half of the compass, levelling off the lower it gets and then a huge gear change into chest voice. We have a reputation, my voice and I.
So.

What's the problem? Well, truth be told, I find it hard to find anybody who really wants me to sing around these parts. Harsh. Maybe it's all in my head. Or maybe that's what some people would like me to think!
I was involved in a Madrigal group in my first year. We didn't do terribly much, but we did at least one recital so that was good. Yeah, Madrigals! I wanted to sing early music when I got to University. I was told that Countertenors were wanted and were the in thing and I'd be well in.
When I arrived, I had a head full of idealism and knowledge of Early Music. I can still tune up a Viol Consort almost off the top of my head, and used to be able to rattle composer's names and dates off like a crazy man. Can you see where this is going?
Anyway, Second Year dawns (ugh) and there forms an ensemble, dedicated to Early Music...Invitation Only, bro. You know, like the top of the pops Early Music, the big favourites, including big Tom T's Lamentations. Oh well. Funnily enough, that's not the only ensemble formed with no small interest in Early Music. Once again, Invitation only and once again lost in the post. Funny, I can't really start being an arse about these things because a) It was their choice b) It's been and gone but 3) I'm always going to be annoyed about it. Thankfully I was still in situe in the Chamber Choir, much like I am now, much like first year.

Mistake number one has to be voluntarily choosing to get Spammed. The strange bi-polarity of being invited to have a scholarship and attracting the look of death and several pointed comments every rehearsal about "someone's pushing the balance" meant that quite basically I went home in tears every other week. Ok, that's not nearly descriptive enough. I believed that singing was all I was good at, but thankfully I was still good at it. Turns out I almost got convinced otherwise, and almost gave up entirely. If I can't sing, then what else am I good for? Stage Management? (Too soon?) Things aren't quite as bad this year, as my improved living and study arrangement has allowed me to regain some thickness. And you grumblers over there, if I can't write what I like in my tell-all blog, then where can I write it?

I basically gave up on early music. Seriously. I am reliably and repeatedly informed that we of the old Countertenoring type are too loud, out of tune, unable to blend effectively blah blah blah...The only thing I may be fit for is solo work, a little questionable since I only have ensemble experience these days, no connections and...seriously, how often do you think I get asked to sing solo? (Oh Woe is me? Get real. This is my true perception). That and in all honesty, I don't often listen to early music for the pleasure of doing so. It has to have the driving motor of North German Stylus Phantasticus, or the Organic counterpoint of Weelkes and the avant-garde members of the English Madrigal School, or John Bennett's lusty fugal style...you get the picture. I often find Renaissance polyphony boring, because I'm not involved in it.

So. I didn't bother about early music for a long while, mainly during the summer. I did very little singing, perhaps the rest let my voice relax a little as well. It's certainly much smoother and I have more dynamic control than ever. A freshman, in his infinite idealism, posted on the facebook forum for the new intake this year that he wanted to start a Barbershop Quartet. The rest is history! Or, It'll have to wait til next time.

Mr. Sandman...

Another very personal subject close to my heart. Being published on the Internet. Oh well, it's not like I have a world-beating readership, is it? Haha... Read on, if you like.

Dearest reader, I have chosen to discuss my habit of dreaming. I dream almost every night, and therefore feel as if I have quite a handle on it. Obviously confident enough to tell you about it anyway. My dreaming is linked to the ever-deepening chasm of Synaesthesia that I face, which I will discuss for 40 marks herein. I think it might help explain my crazy ways, but then again it might not as well. Who knows! This could be fun.

Every time's pot luck, inasmuch as I could dream about anything, anyone, anywhere in any way. How exciting. There is no episodic content (so far), and I can't remember having any recurring dreams either, but just because I can't remember doesn't mean they haven't happened. 20 and a half years is a long time, so sue me for not being able to remember everything. A-hem. This said, the content of my dreams are usually on the 'every day' side of perception; I never have special powers, I'm not The Batman, I don't have High Tea with Optimus Prime &c &c (but boy would I like High Tea with Optimus Prime). The people I see in my dreams are the people I see on a regular basis. So I probably dream about you all the time, but not in a creepy way. It's just that you're there when I'm awake and pretending to be a functioning human being, so it's natural that I think about you and that my subconscious puts you there in my head while I sleep (don't get freaked out, I'll keep digging). This because I often dream in complete sensory immersion.

I mean, think about it. It is crazy. I'm closing my eyes and then seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling just like I do when I'm awake. I'm not aware of the fact that I'm dreaming when I'm dreaming, but come round to it shortly after reawakening into this cold and unforgiving plane of existence we call reality, usually because I start to forget the things that aren't details. Sometimes the situations are unreal though, you know? There's nothing 'wrong', the sky is still cerulean, cars are still on the left hand side of the road and public transport is still rubbish. It's just that I'll see people who don't 'belong', you know? Like I'll go to HQ and say, Julian of Norwich will be behind the bar, or something. Completely believable while I'm snoozing but a little questionable in the light of day. Perhaps it means I miss them? Or some deeper symbolism at work? What is HQ? Why is such and such a person who I met in Norfolk in my local? What does it mean really? I try not to worry too much about it actually, but I certainly see what my horoscope has to say as well. Perhaps the planets and stars have a hand in it, I don't know.

It gets better. These big immersive episodes aren't always on the menu. The usual fare consist of about three of my so-called senses in operation, usually (but not always) sight with its cycling line up of wingmen. This is where the other type of magic happens. More often in third person, I distinctly remember one dream, as an outside observer walking through countryside with one particular Norfolk resident being able to smell...everything. It had recently rained (in my head), and I remember that we were talking, but I can't actually recall any detail. Sometimes all I can 'see' are colours, specifically colours that react to sounds, like music or someone talking to me (in my head) &c &c. I'm not unnerved by this anymore. I mean, far be it for me to lose sleep over it! (Boo)

Funny things crack off while I'm asleep, no doubt. I usually discard most of what happens almost immediately on waking. If I'm traveling, it's usually not important so I don't hold on to it. If I go to a public place that's usually full of people I don't know, saaaaaaaay HQ, I'll put a load of people I don't know in the dream and not pay any attention to them. Just that I'm there and it's always full of unfamiliar locals so my subconscious fills in the gaps for me. Until I dream about going there and it's empty. AND WHAT WILL HAPPEN THEN?!? You get the picture. Mostly there's one person who's important to the story, and whatever happens happens around them. I try to remember as much as I can. In or out of character, there must be something important or my subconscious wouldn't bring them into the focus like that. And so on. I feel their touch, and see the shine in their eyes. If we're firing on all cylinders I'll wake up and wonder if they really own that perfume or I did just make it up. Standard, no?

Enough's enough though. Time to stop boring you with this drivel. Keep tuning in, because there'll be more stuff up soon. I've kind of been taking a holiday from most of the Internet the past few weeks. I was trying to arrange a trip to Norwich, but insufficient funds and a lack of anywhere to stay put the kibosh on that one. I haven't been on my Facebook for ages now, and I shall probably just pop on to post the link for this and then not even stop to check; I can't really be bothered at the moment. I'm operating out of my twitter though, and I'm always on call (haha). I'm on the path to recovery, especially after a very harrowing time of my month (more on that story later), so we'll see how it goes. Who knows where it could lead, eh? (Probable disaster). Time for bed.