April 2025
New music, an eventful gig, and a short story
This month, despite the Easter Holidays meaning hardly any campus work, I have been flat-out busy in an office job which I won’t be able to talk much about until next year. The work is as dry as it gets, but I am blessed to have it.
It’s just as well I have a proven ability to function in society, because it has been another strong month creatively. And some of that creativity might provide evidence to the contrary.
Activities
I was invited to perform as The Kev at a comedy night in a wine bar in Greater Manchester. My set included ‘The FVSDA’ a new song which, at an open mic just two nights earlier, had had most of the audience in tears of laughter. Through the whole set, there was one table of very progressive-looking women who were laughing like mad, but I avoided eye-contact with most of the audience. Judging by the remarks I later heard, this was probably a wise move.
Drawing out the intended emotion from an audience is my favourite feeling. Whether it is making them laugh with a silly song or between-song one-liner, or moving them with a classical guitar piece.
Some performers prefer a negative reaction to no reaction at all, but having been raised Catholic, I find I hate being hated or even receiving dirty looks. It’s just as well I am not a politician or activist.
Output
New guitar videos included a play-along of Lenny Kravitz’s ‘It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over’ and a recording of ‘Air on a G String’ by Johann Sebastian Bach. This month’s Monday Mandarin video was on ‘Dreaming in Chinese’ by Deborah Fallows.
I also re-released the short story ‘Rhinos’, which I worked on from 2014 to 2018. It is my take on China’s business culture, a piranha tank which I experienced intimately. And I finished album 4 as The Kev. It is now available on all platforms, and the launch night will be September 20th.
Media appearances included another appearance on Dragon Voice Radio, and this radio interview about the new album:
I also finished a demo of a brand new song, about a mermaid.
Wider World
Pope Francis died on Easter Monday. The relative simplicity of the funeral reflected his efforts to build a church for the poor.
Following the conservative John Paul and the authoritarian Benedict, the ceremony was fitting for a man who only wanted to be seen as a parish priest for the world.
He distinguished himself from his predecessors by acknowledging that faith without doubt was no faith at all, stating ‘In this quest to seek and find God in all things there is still an area of uncertainty. There must be.’
As journalist Andrew Sullivan wrote, ‘on gay men and lesbians, on communion for divorced couples, on transgender people, he did not overturn doctrine, but he removed stigma.’
I am not an atheist, but am not a believer in the Christian God to an extent that would justify becoming a regular church-goer. And the only two Catholic priests I have ever both liked and respected were fictional, Karl Malden in ‘On the Waterfront’, and Robert De Niro in ‘Sleepers’.
But the past week is a reminder of why organised religion is so appealing to so many people. It reminds me of a poem by Dennis O’Driscoll, titled ‘Missing God’:
His grace is no longer called for
before meals: farmed fish multiply
without His intercession.
Bread production rises through
disease-resistant grains devised
scientifically to mitigate His faults.
Yet, though we rebelled against Him
like adolescents, uplifted to see
an oppressive father banished –
a bearded hermit – to the desert,
we confess to missing Him at times.
Miss Him during the civil wedding
when, at the blossomy altar
of the registrar’s desk, we wait in vain
to be fed a line containing words
like “everlasting” and “divine”.
Miss Him when the TV scientist
explains the cosmos through equations,
leaving our planet to revolve on its axis
aimlessly, a wheel skidding in snow.
You can read the whole thing here or listen to it here.