Rising

Last week on my return to Dundee after a glorious but brief Basque break I found myself singing in an cold and creaky old Friary. I learnt two things.

One: History is fascinating.
The usual spot for this 'singing group', run by a friend of mine, was locked as the owner had gone on holiday without leaving a spare key... Fine. We managed to find an alternative venue in an old Friary, now used by a local church with the large meeting hall rented for events. We, however, were using the old living quarters as a practice space. It was fascinating... The monks last lived in the building in the late 80s but had left suddenly...no one seems to know why. When the current owners arrived there was stuff left everywhere - rooms full of possessions. During a small interval we took a wander around and stumbled across an old oak paneled library full of ancient books, including first editions of Rudyard Kipling novels with a strange logo embossed on each cover... An elephant with what is now known as the Nazi emblem, the swastika, but in the early 1900s would have had totally different conitations of scaredness and goodness. Similarly I found a novel by GK Chesterton published in 1922 named 'Eugenics and Other Evils'. Powerfully, in the first chapter he states 'It is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists'. It's amazing to think what followed just a few years after the publishing of these essays...  (In fact, I've found you can read the whole book online here: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Eugenics_and_other_Evils)
So, I guess what I'm saying is. It's really interesting imagining life in a world before we knew all that we know today. I want to know more about history. I might try and read those essays on Eugenics.

Two: I love singing.
That's not news, I have enjoyed singing for as long as I can remember although it has been a long time since I did anything more formal than bobble about my room accompanying Gabrielle on a sunny Sunday morning or join Cat Steven's in greeting the break of a new day whilst doing the washing up. It's an expression of my contentedness and happiness.
But this day I was quite sad. I didn't want to be back at university, I was tired, I was a little fed up. But after only a few minutes of singing I felt elated. There is something quite spiritual about singing in a group. Something very beautiful about using your voice which comes from within you, which can express very subtle and sometime unacknowledged emotions, joining together with other individual voices to make something beautiful.
It's fucking great.

As Enya would say; How Can I Keep From Singing?