Last night, I stood out on the cold Calton Hill with about 10,000 other revelers to banish winter and welcome in summer. We watched the Beltane Festival, a modern reinterpretation of the pre-Christian Spring celebration. We weren’t entirely certain of what we were getting ourselves into, only that there would be fire
The Drummers, Beltane 2012
At nightfall, we moved to the other side of the Acropolis, to welcome the much-needed fire! It was absolutely freezing on Calton Hill–I wore my heavy down coat and shivered more than at Hogmanay (New Year’s celebrations). Unfortunately, being a bit vertically challenged (and in the middle of the crowd), I couldn’t see much more than this, the Processionals lighting the fire.
Lighting the fires
After, we watched some fire dancing (including flaming hula hoops), thoroughly impressed. I’d like to try my hand at it some time.
The night continued on, still freezing cold. There were more processions, dancing, and finally the Green Man and May Queen lit the massive bonfire! Warmth at last!
Dancing by Flames
For more serious information about Beltane, visit beltane.org
To celebrate my second semester being completed, I left Edinburgh for the first time since I went up to Loch Tay in January.
I didn’t travel too far, only to Linlithgow, a town about 20 minutes outside of Edinburgh by train. The main attraction? Breaking in my shiny new Historic Scotland pass. I’d heard good things about Linlithgow Palace, birthplace of Mary, Queen of Scots.
I didn’t know what to expect. I did no research on the palace, only finding out that it was there and I could get in for free with my pass.
I certainly wasn’t expecting a ruined palace. No roof, and slick stone–thank goodness it was a sunny day!
“It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind;–but when a beginning is made–when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt–it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.”
-Jane Austen
I have been bitten by the dancing bug. The jitter bug, one could say. Dancing, swing dancing in particular, is addictive. It is, for lack of a better phrase, my drug. The high that I get from a night of dancing keeps me going through the week, the perfect fix to the Wednesday lows.
Lately, I’ve found that two days a week isn’t cutting it. I want to dance all the time. I was fortunate last week, dancing on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. But just the same, it isn’t enough. My friends and I are panicking, trying to figure out how we’ll continue with our dancing obsession over the summer months, when the uni society stops running.
Jane Austen speaks the truth. One can do without dancing. But once you’ve started, once it’s grabbed and enthralled, you count the days to your next opportunity.
Music. It calls to me. There’s something visceral about it. It grabs me and twists my gut, weaving its way into my subconscious. Songs stick in my mind, they refuse to leave, perfect ear worms. The above song, “Speedway” by Morrissey is one of these songs (I can’t help it. I move to the UK and I develop a love of the Smiths and Morrissey’s solo stuff). I listen to his stuff while working; I find it to be just the sort of thing I need to get focused.
But enough on Morrissey (for this post).
Music in itself. I find myself drawn to it, perhaps more than any other art form (strange, for a writer/painter/graphic designer). I’m stopped by its sheer incredibility. The range of emotions, the sense of calm, fear, love evoked by notes expresses the human condition more than words or paintings ever could.
To quote Aldous Huxley, “After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
The past few months have been difficult ones for me. The coursework has been particularly strenuous in a different way from last term. My health hasn’t been the best (nothing serious, just atrocious colds and uncomfortable back injuries). Things haven’t been going as I had hoped–not poorly, but not as well as my internal narrative wanted.
The other day, I went into St Giles Cathedral to look around. A string quartet practiced for the evening performance. As the violin sang out, the cello setting a steady pace, my heart soared, leaped, fell, felt, repeated. The starting and stopping as the musicians ran through their piece struck me. It was, in its imperfection, exactly as I felt. There was joy, frustration, repetition.
Words failed me. Visual arts failed me. Yet music fit where no other expression would. It was fleeting, yet permanent, the memory to be one of the strongest I have.
My strongest memories are tied around music. The two best concerts I’ve been to have had moments of transcendence–from the Who, when Roger Daltrey sang portions of Tommy, a medley that meant so much to me, given that I had listened to that album ad nauseum the summer before. The second was the Swell Season, when Glen Hansard got the audience to join in on the chorus of ‘Back Broke.’ The effect was haunting, uniting, beautiful. For moments at both of these gigs, the music transcended. That’s all that mattered.
Last week, whilst at a Jazz festival with friends, I was hit with a line, a phrase, a sentence. Somehow it managed to stick in my mind, mutating, growing, digging itself into the part of my brain that ought to be reserved for PHP and PHP alone.
“Hello,” it said to me after six days of maturation. “I’m the first line of your novel.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “Tell me about yourself, future novel.”
“I’m chick lit. Or at least more female-focused-fiction than you’re used to, Ms. John-le-Carre-and-Patrick-O’Brian-are-my-favourite-authors.”
This is where I spat out my tea and wondered if my painkillers were a lot stronger than my GP said they were (swing dancing accident–water, concrete and two enthusiastic lindy hoppers don’t mix particularly well. I didn’t break anything, thankfully).
Nope, they aren’t. It’s just the story that needs to be told.
I haven’t been able to write fiction for months, not since I arrived in Edinburgh. Whether it was the change of scenery, the stress of coursework or a general reprogramming of the brain, fiction slipped to the backburner in favour of my recording everyday life, the adventures and the misadventures.
Turns out, though, that my opening line, combined with fodder from my day-to-day-life would make for a potentially hilarious, snarky and above all, entertaining book on life and love in the 21st century. Or some other cliche. Regardless, I’m excited to start writing…but why does the Muse need to return when I’m up to my ears in coursework?
Ned Wolfe 