Wednesday, January 25th,
6:30pm, 2017, Somewhere in the West of Ireland.
Dear Reader,
I just came from a French café where I went to study for my
French test tomorrow, and I felt like a pretentious protagonist in a film of
some sort, but then it felt nice because I did a lot of revision on the
conditional tense.
But,
at some point, it just
started to feel like the words were blurring
or dripping
through the page, and out on to the other side in a big tangle
of letters.
I kept thinking: Why is the conditional tense seen as one of the
most important ones? Why would one do this when one should’ve
done that but couldn’t have done?
Isn’t it that you want something or you don’t?
That said, I can be indecisive at the best of times.
Had I gone to the library like I had planned, the conditional
tense wouldn’t have made me overthink everything (maybe?) but instead I went to
the café in college and played Charades with the guys, and yet, I then left
with no regrets because we ate muffins and laughed until we I cried.
There is no would I could I should I when it
comes to muffins.
There is only I can, and I will.
I can only hope that tomorrow’s French test will be as inviting.
Those ‘indefinites’ that bounce ceaselessly through my mind’s hall of mirrors
will become more
Definite.
Someday,
decent grades and a good night’s sleep will no longer have to
rely on the conditional tense, because they will be as pleasant and
unconditional as muffins and games of Charades with the guys,
no matter how often French grammar might not deem them to be so.
*
Monday, January 30th,
6pm, 2017, Somewhere in the West of Ireland.
Dear Reader,
Begin with a bang! – That’s what I learned at the Writing Workshop I went to on Wednesday evening, in which we began with five minutes of
free writing - Writing non-stop for five minutes about the first thing that
comes into your head, and so thoughts of my ‘indefinites’, Charades, and
muffins tumbled from my pen, and of course they did so, again and again.
The white room where we
wrote whilst wrapped in piano music and a jasmine aroma, was like a setting
best designed to distract me from the French test I was so unsure of; A test
that turned out to be more definite than I’d imagined,
perfectly okay in the end, and not nearly as bad as I had thought it would be.
Beginning with a bang
in this case had to start with Thursday’s night of laughter and card games
preceding a bus to Dublin Airport at two in the morning, because my musical
friends and I would be heading to Glasgow for the Celtic Connections festival.
After the lullaby from
Dreamworks’‘The Prince of Egypt’ had pulled
me to sleep through my ear phones for two hours of the bus journey, I found
myself in Dublin, and as a shadow of myself. I The zombie trudged on
like a slow eroding stone; yesterday’s makeup melting into her skin and mascara
cementing eyelashes together; The airplane’s turbulence repeatedly jolting her
awake, fusing with the panic of flying and last semester’s unknown and indefinite
exam results that loomed overhead.
But later, those indefinites
that had shaken me, had now muted themselves as the zombie I took
a lovely nap in Glasgow’s botanic gardens, and walked around humming the theme
from ‘Jurassic
Park’ to myself. I relished in the earthy floral scent, and wished
aloud that I could take a photo of this smell. I wish we could take pictures
of smells, because sometimes something’s scent can be more pivotal to its
beauty than by the way it meets the eye. My friend, an engineer, disagreed;
saying that I shouldn’t speak so soon. - A bird could poo on my head and then I’d
think differently!
How funny and interesting
it was to see how my friends from different backgrounds and college courses
could think so differently, and react to a city in such contrasting ways. Where
a writer might say: ‘Look at those beautiful lights!’, whilst exploring Glasgow’s
streets at night, an engineer might say ‘Look at that cool building!’, and both
statements would be weighed equally in terms of truth and enthusiasm.
Likewise, everyone had
their own personal highlights of the trip. I’m still deciding on mine, but to
start with, I liked the graveyards and abandoned buildings.
Well, just consider that for a moment. That moment may be
fleeting because I know you’d rather think about nicer things than graveyards
and abandoned buildings, and I don’t blame you, but all it takes is a moment of
your time to consider that these places equate to libraries filled with
stories; some finished and some not yet written.
The tombs of a place of
rest are often formed with intricate details. In a graveyard, I always feel the
fire as it gets closer. I feel it crawling up from the inside as it makes my
cheeks redden, and it’s all I can think about these days.
Really,
when all I can think about is writing, my mind becomes a tunnel.
It is closed at both ends, with writing bouncing back and forth from both sides
and into the centre; tiresome flames licking its feet.
Should I be happy? Sad? Scared? Excited?
This thing, this… beautiful peril that can
simultaneously tear me apart and make me feel so whole has to be worth it, when
all it started from was a blank page.
The graveyard in
Glasgow was peaceful enough for me to listen to these truths about writing that
I think of so often. I stopped occasionally to admire the unique tomb stones,
trying to imagine what these people’s lives might have been like before they
had ended, and jotting down names that I liked and could use as potential names
for characters.
In a place so cold, I felt so warm because
I like graveyards.
I like the stories they tell.
They instil a serenity in me in the same way that stories always
have, and I hope that no matter how much technology develops in future, people
will still read bedtime stories to their children, because without stories,
dreams are just boring hallucinations.
A popular opinion
amongst my friends suggests that the music was the best part of the trip
by far, and of course, they wouldn’t be wrong. We had many many tunes, between
playing music together in the hostel we stayed in and having tunes again in the
concert hall. The standard of music played by the acts on stage in the festival
club was so high that it left me ranting to my friends late on Friday night
about how I wanted to cry over how talented those bands were. Three of us left
the club to get some greasy food; arms linked so that we wouldn’t fall down the
hill that lead to the chipper. We sang old Irish songs through our voyage, only
to return to the club for another few hours after we’d eaten our food.
– Ready to
dance again for sure.
I like spotting the
difference between Irish & Scottish traditional music. It’s all in the
ornamentation really; Scottish trad bounces through repeated notes whilst Irish
trad swirls through its rolled notes. These observations make me think of the
time when I first heard the difference between expressive, Parisienne French
and calm, Moroccan French, and in all my years of learning the language, I had
felt like I’d finally made it. Well, I don’t always feel
like that these days, but having that memory to lean on is what allows me to
keep trying, day after day.
The same can be said
for my years spent playing tunes. The Scottish tunes’ octave leaps could also
be heard in exclamations of Scottish Gaelic, the country’s native language
which is so similar to our own here in Ireland. Again, I had felt like I had made
it in Glasgow (and in life, somewhat), when I was having a conversation
with a man in the concert hall who spoke to us in Scottish Gaelic as we
responded in Irish Gaelic, and despite the differences between the two minority
languages, I could understand everything he was saying to me; As if I needed
any other reason to love words more than I already do.
I
love words; I love how they develop and complement each other,
though they might not come from the exact same language. That said, they have
definitely stemmed from the same seed. I could hear the octave leaps from
Scottish Trad in this man’s voice; It was the cheerful rise and fall of his
accent that had invited my ears to listen, and had enabled me to understand a
language I had never spoken before.
Such success regarding
that minority language did not help me in my understanding of a Canadian
minority language on Saturday night, when I met the Canadian Trad band that had
been playing on stage the night before. They tried their best to teach me parts
of their language, but now I can’t remember a single word of it, nor can I even
remember the name of the language which is a real shame. However, I do
remember one word that kept coming up over and over again amongst the new
friends I’d made for the night, and that was my very own name – Mairéad,
because they had never heard a name like it before and it gave them the giggles.
I was most definitely in
favour of the lols because with each lol came a free drink, and the lols were
quite funny to be fair, like when one guy asked me: ‘when are we going to the
marching marade, Mairéad?’, and
following that, my new friends promised to always think of me when they went to
a parade as it rhymed with my name, and of course, I laughed most when one of
them asked me: ‘Mairéad, Mairéad, do you
like Charades ‘cause your name is Mairéad?’
‘Yes.
Yes
I do like Charades, and muffins are good too’,
I said,
laughing because the whole thing had reminded me of my free writing from
Wednesday’s work shop when I talked about the muffins and the Charades and how
they collectively acted as the catalyst in my attempt to stress out less when
it comes to French tests, and exam results.
Exam
results,
which by the way turned out to be more definite than I’d
imagined, perfectly okay in the end, and not nearly as bad as I had thought they
would be.
-As pleasant and unconditional as muffins and games of Charades
with the guys,
like marvelling at train sets and cuddling Penguin teddies with
friends in Hamley’s toy shop,
like eating greasy food and using ‘we’re on holidays’ as an
excuse,
like sitting on the tops of bunk beds to play tunes and
comparing it to the wings of an orchestra,
like harmonizing with Irish song after Irish song,
like laughing for so long that you can’t remember what you were
laughing at to begin with,
like hearing a friend play a tune that you hadn’t heard since
childhood,
like making your way in troops to a hotel you’re not even
staying in after the club has closed, just to go to another Trad session,
like witnessing a friend run into the boys’ room at 7am to sing
to them and then run out the door again,
like hearing the bagpipes and drums from all ends of all
streets,
like drinking espressos in order to keep going,
like seeing the dog that collected the busker’s money,
like the feeling of warmth in cold air,
like a dream,
like a story.
Without stories, dreams are just
boring hallucinations. It is these stories that eventually fuel my confidence
in my abilities; whether it be in my ability to speak another language, or in
my ability to play music, or in my ability to be a friend and a good bearer of
muffins.
It is these stories that make my ‘indefinites’ seem more definite.
And that…
was definitely Glasgow.
Ciao,
Madame Mayreed. x
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