A Day at the Opera

"Let the songs begin!

Let the music play!"

"Darling, you are far more resilient than you realise,” a slightly husky, smoke-kissed voice whispered to me as the house lights were doused and the entire captivated audience took a collective intake of breath, all eyes firmly fixed on the conductor who was, at that very instant, suspended in that magical, mythical moment that is the eternity of a second immediately before he raises his baton and gives the sign for the proud players of the orchestra to play that initial, so deeply longed for and highly anticipated opening note.
 

"Now my dream is slowly coming true..."

Unbeknownst to the orchestra members and the beautifully attired audience, sitting in the secluded box area of the dress circle on the stage left side of the auditorium there was a finely dressed man, who had, just a few hours earlier, been receiving intravenous antibiotics through the port-a-cath in his chest and who had also spent the previous days and evenings fearing that his appearance at this Queen opera extravaganza was in serious peril, and yet, despite the vast odds that had been set against him, there I was, completely present, and fervently engaged, with every facet of my physical, emotional, intellectual and sensual being, with the performance that was within a heartbeat of beginning. It really is almost impossible for me to describe exactly how much being at this concert meant to me, and the very fact that the date had come along at a time when yet another damned respiratory virus had landed me with an exacerbation of my cystic fibrosis, requiring intravenous antibiotic therapy, had caused me great added stress, frustration and concern on top of an already highly worrying health situation. Freddie Mercury, any previous or regular readers of this blog will recognise, is quite simply one of the great inspirations and loves of my musical and artistic life. And, as this already emotionally charged audience member (that's me in case you haven't twigged, my darlings!), attempted to discern exactly where this strong but sensitive voice that had addressed me so kindly had actually come from, the orchestra suddenly broke the anticipation of the room by playing the opening, brooding bars of Queen’s towering, gothic song, 'Innuendo.' And in an instant, it felt like that strangely gothic song had suddenly found its natural home. For, enchanted reader, this glorious spectacle was taking place at The Grange Opera House in Hampshire, a magnificent yet fading piece of glorious architecture, which in places seems to resemble the regal ruins of Athens and Ancient Rome. The stultifying heat of this piping hot day also helped me confirm my belief that the three of us, that is, the venue, the song 'Innuendo,' and myself, had somehow merged into one entity. I could almost visualise it. The three of us, battered, but not broken edifices, battling the ravages of time and decay, and resolutely defying to give up our intense love of theatre, life, beauty and grandeur:

“Oh, yes, we’ll keep on trying,

We’ll tread that fine line,

Oh, we’ll keep on trying,

Till the end of time,

Till the end of time…”

Reflecting back now, I am struck by how much has changed since my nineteen year old self first heard and was mesmerised by the song 'Innuendo,' around January 1991. Back then, intravenous antibiotics were still quite new to me, and although I was only too aware that CF was going to cause me immense struggles and hardship, the knowledge that there were inevitable, impending serious health issues in my near future had also given me an appreciation of life that meant I was going to make the most of every single day and night that was to be granted to me. Back in those days, I would regularly dance and "air guitar" as if I actually was Brian May, for the entire song on multiple repeats if I so desired, and indeed, to the entire album of which 'Innuendo' was the title track. But now, thirty-four years later, I reflected on how I now love it in a very different way. In 1991, I was entranced by the rolling drums, the audacity of Queen releasing yet another six minute plus single, complete with flamenco guitar instrumental section (performed by Yes guitarist Steve Howe), and of course, Freddie’s truly extraordinary vocal delivery, made all the more remarkable as he was very seriously ill by the time of recording this album. The whole, understandably, is far greater than and individual parts, yet there are different elements of this song that now stand out and either pierce and/or shatter my brittle heart that probably escaped me somewhat at the time. The brooding, questioning atmosphere, the yearning for meaning and the seeking of answers is buried deep within the lyrics, with this urgency increased by Freddie’s magisterial vocal, and the haunted meanderings expressed by the haunting playing of the band members. And all of this was stunningly recreated by the orchestra (the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra), and the sensational guest singers, who all combined to bring Freddie’s soaring, impassioned vocal melodies to glorious life. Sadly, I never got to experience Queen in concert and I have refrained from attending any of their post-Freddie shows as I just don’t think I would be able to open myself up enough emotionally to enjoy it properly. But this opportunity to hear Queen’s music performed by opera singers, accompanied by a full orchestra, was a dream come true as far as I was concerned, as Queen's music is unashamedly dramatic and operatic, (to the chagrin of the scruffy indie brigade who often condemn Queen as being inauthentic, oh! I could almost die laughing!) and, of course, Freddie himself was a bona fide diva, and opera fanatic, and I am utterly convinced he would have been beaming with delight if he was able to be present and witnessing what was happening on the stage at that moment.

"Barcelona!"

“I had this perfect dream,

This dream was me and you…”

In a show of a great many highlights, far too many to write about in this limited space, the absolute icing on this most wondrous, dramatic of evenings, was hearing 'Barcelona' sung by actual opera singers with this magnificent full orchestra. Oh my beating heart, be wary not to tremble so quickly that you break out of my rib cage! This astonishing, romantic, majestic hymn to Eros and to life was up there with any live musical experience I have ever experienced. From the opening bars to the towering crescendo, it was as if every single performer, every audience member and each member of staff were only too aware what a precious, possibly once in a lifetime occurrence this was. Time stood still as the singers savoured the words and melodies and the sweeping strings of the orchestra brought the song to an epiphany of feeling. The heat inside the auditorium, despite the old ancient walls doing their utmost to protect us from the ravaging sun that was bleaching the old stone building outside, made it feel as if we were actually in Gaudi's heat-drenched Barcelona, and not Hampshire.

"Wish my dream would never go away.

God willing, we will meet again,

Some day..."

The rest of the concert passed by in a kind of perfect dream, as we were treated to mesmerising renditions of some of Queen's most fabulous songs, and which, of course, included 'Love of my Life,' 'Somebody to Love,' and the closing song, an utterly ravishing and rousing version of their undoubted masterpiece, 'Bohemian Rhapsody.'

After the concert had finished it was wonderful to spend a little bit of time discussing the evening with other audience members and staff members, many of whom agreed with me that this was simply too majestic to be a one off, and that they desperately hoped would be repeated in the years to come. We readily admitted that we had occasionally been brought to tears by the staggeringly beautiful renditions that we had witnessed, but had left the auditorium as if floating gracefully on air, having just spent the previous two hours in what could quite easily be described as a musical heaven.

And as my wonderful wife drove us both home after the concert, where real life and IV antibiotics and hospital visits and health worries once more awaited us, I felt a surge of that emotion that so often prevents me from falling into despair when my health situation feels like it might be about to become too much: gratitude. Despite the health and treatment issues I was going through, I had made it to this concert, a concert I had wanted to attend right down to the very depths of my entire physical and non-physical being. It really had been touch and go, and the odds were most definitely not in my favour, yet I hadn't missed it, and had been able to enjoy and savour every second of it. And as my eyes watered with soft, salty tears, I looked out of the car window and focussed my gaze on the dark night sky that was lit up by the bright, shining moon and glittering stars, and I suddenly heard that same voice that had summoned me earlier, once again whispering softly into my mind and soul. "Darling," it repeated to me, "I told you you were more resilient than you realise. Perhaps now you will believe me." And in that moment I recognised whose voice it was that was talking to me:

It was Freddie's.

Proust's Madeleine Cake

 I was listening to a playlist that I have created on Spotify called 'Byron's Favourite Slowies' last night, and one of the songs that came on sent me on a truly Proustian madeleine cake trip back to my fifth form drama school days in Liverpool in the mid to late 80s. The song that prompted this extraordinary trip down memory lane was 'China in Your Hand' by T'Pau, and the memories it stirred were so vivid and invigorated my mind so much that they prevented me from falling asleep (I listen to music on my headphones in bed). The first, involuntary memory was about T'Pau's lead singer, Carol Decker. My drama school friends, as fifteen/sixteen year old chaps are wont to do, were discussing one day who their current pop star crushes were. I had recently bought a single that I'd heard on the radio and fallen deeply in love with called 'China in Your Hand' by the aforementioned band, T'Pau, so instead of saying Madonna (who I had it bad for, dear reader!) I declared how I thought the singer of T'Pau was "well fit" and that she was my current main pop star crush. This was met by a barrage of uncontrollable laughter that could have crushed me if I had been in a bad space that day, because, according to them, she was a "ginger." This was news to me as the single cover was in black and white so I had no idea what colour her hair was. Here's the single I owned:

It actually gives me a great deal of pride that I refused to change my mind at their taunts about the shade of T'Pau singer Carol Decker's hair, although it did pique my interest about her even more, and I was utterly fascinated to have discovered through my mates that this gargantuan voiced pop/soul singer had ginger hair. I'd already envisioned from the black and white picture and having her serenade my soul with her wounded song that she was probably a witch, or at least in touch with the stranger, divine feminine side of life. I'm not sure where I will have turned to to find out whether what they were saying was true (Smash Hits, maybe), but when I saw her in full glorious colour my heart tumbled even more:

I'm pretty sure Sigmund Freud would find this fascinating stuff, as not only did I later not only discover and fall very deeply in love with the pre- Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti's heart-turning red heads in his astonishing art works, but my stunning wife also had long flowing locks, which soon became a red "Bowie-pixie" look. I clearly had a very soft spot for the otherworldly ginger/red hair look from an impressionable age! But not only that, listening to T'pau last night also took my memory to further depths, and one of the memories that I recalled was actually one of the most pleasant of my teens. I was about 17/18 by now, and I was playing the role of Mick in an adaptation of Catherine Cookson's The Fifteen Streets at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle. We had been touring much of the UK and this weekly stint in the north east had me staying at possibly one of the nicest digs I've ever had. It was in Gateshead and I can recall the view every time I left the front door, which was on a slope that I could have skied down as it was so steep...

These two pictures, sadly, are not actual pictures by me from that front door, but are images I have found on Google, but as a very young man who hadn't even turned seventeen yet, living away from my home village in North Wales, this was a different universe. I loved the city of Newcastle, and the digs I had, was, in all fairness, entirely wasted on me. It was a converted loft and had en-suite shower, built-in kitchen, and a beautiful, large lounge space with luxurious sofas and chairs. Bryan Ferry would have quite gladly used this place as a secret love nest, I am sure, but for me, at that time of life when I was sixteen but still looked about fourteen, it was simply somewhere to sleep and keep my stuff. But 'China in Your hand' by T'pau has reminded me of the extraordinary emotional power music has on our minds, as if it wasn't for this song coming on at that moment these memories may have stayed hidden away forever. And not only that, but it has also remined me what an interesting life I have actually had. It may sound like a cliché but I have more than once been called the Billy Elliot of North Wales. And it's actually pretty accurate. Just picture me for a second, dear reader: a boy brought up by his single mum and grandparents in a tiny village in North Wales called Northop, living an adolescence punctuated by bullying and being seriously abused for many years by a supposed trusted family member before I managed to partially escape by gaining a place at a prestigious performing arts school in Liverpool when I was thirteen; and at the age of fourteen, creating and starring as Gavroche in Les Miserables with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the West End of London. I feel like I really must tell my story at some point. My wife and my friends have been persuading me how inspiring my life and story is and just how helpful it would be for other people facing similar problems. It's taken some time, but I am completely of the same opinion as them now. My story should be told. I have underplayed my achievements for most of my adult life instead of being immensely proud of them. Dear, faithful readers, I won't say too much for now but I will leave you with this teaser. I am trying to get the wheels moving in a way that my writing will be improved to such a level that my beloved dream of being a professional, published writer might possibly be achieved. In that famous theatrical manner all I ask of you for now is to say this to me:

"Good luck, darling!"

Until next time, I remain,

Your Nocturnal Butterfly. 

My Tulpa: How Post-punk Improved My Vocabulary

Whilst looking at my book shelf yesterday, my eyes were drawn to a book I own that I haven't read since I first finished it straight after purchasing it back in 2009: a biography of the Post-punk band, Magazine by Helen Chase. Flicking through its pages I read a page where the band's vocalist and superb lyricist, Howard Devoto, was discussing how he had come up with the idea for the song, 'My Tulpa.'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_AEpDOuWk8

And almost immediately, I recalled how very much I admire this song, and had from that very first instant become fascinated by the word 'Tulpa,' a word that until then (it was about 1990, I would guess, when I bought the album it's on, Real Life, my first Magazine CD), I had never actually seen or heard of. For some reason it then immediately got me reminiscing about how exciting it was, back in my formative years, to discover words such as this, and, obviously not having Google immediately to hand, having to go and seek out their meaning in a dictionary.

The meaning of the word Tulpa (sadly, from Google, not my old dictionary):

A tulpa is a being or entity believed to be created through visualization and focused will, often described as a thought-form or an imaginary friend that gains sentience and independence. The concept originates from Tibetan Buddhism, but has also become a popular idea in internet communities where individuals create and interact with tulpas as independent mental companions.


I loved discovering this fascinating and eerie concept, and the strange lyric of the song made slightly more sense for me knowing it. But it's also reminded me just how much I learnt about language and literature from those Post-punk bands that I first immersed myself in when I was 18/19. As usual, I was pretty much completely out of step with my contemporaries and the popular musical culture of the time. This was the beginning, then rapid growth and then near saturation of indie and Madchester, and apart from my idols, James (who were so much more than just indie), in the main, I couldn't stand it. It was almost all exclusively guitar based, synth-free, it possessed lyrical drivel, ("Have you seen my polar bear? It's that white thing over there. I've never had one of those," went one particularly dreadful one by The Charlatans), politically disengaged, and seemed a very dumbed-down, southern middle-class tabloid media notion of working class culture. The more this scruffy, stoner culture became all engulfing, the more I escaped to the past. The first Post-punk band I loved were Simple Minds, and although their high-Post-punk days were behind them at this point, their back catalogue was a joy to behold, and it was through reading an interview with singer Jim Kerr that I first discovered Magazine, who Kerr namechecked in an interview and who later described them as being a big influence during Simple Minds' formative years. I still have that interview and the whole quote is quite interesting:

"Critics say we're Moderne lads with silly eye mascara, making pointless cold music - all alienated and everything. I should fucking well think we do feel alienated, coming from the Gorbals where, if you aren't totally into football and girls, there's something really the matter with you - and where it's really difficult for you to get involved with anything like music... I wish there was a decent genre, as much as I don't like them, for bands like Roxy, Magazine and us."
- Jim Kerr of Simple Minds

These recollections have had me thanking the stars that I had artists such as Simple Minds and Magazine in those days, as while most of my friends were taking vast amounts of drugs and becoming increasingly monosyllabic, probably in no small part aided and abetted by the lowest common denominator lyrics of the baggy, indie landfill bands they were losing their minds over, my attention was most definitely elsewhere, and these Post-punk pioneers not only sounded fabulous, but were also like a pre-University education in themselves. For as well as the highly literate lyrics, the entire aesthetic was artistic and sharp-minded, more post-war European than blissed out American psychedelia, and as well as discovering fascinating new words and ideas through them, authors such as Dostoevsky and J.G. Ballard also entered my world, as did the Bauhaus design museum and the philosophy of Existentialism.

- Gang of Four single,
'I Love a Man in a Uniform'

It's fascinating to me to recall how the more that The Stone Roses dirge, 'Fools Gold', or 'Step On' by The happy Mondays reverberated everywhere I went when I was out in public areas, on my headphones I had the likes of The Comsat Angels and, of course, Magazine sound-tracking and educating my mind during each and every step. Here are some of the words and ideas that I first learned through the Post-punk bands that I was avidly listening to, back in 1989/90, when I was still a very young man.

'Cacophany':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iD8HICmmqE

This strange word first crossed my path as a piece of music and part of the title on Simple Minds' second album, Reel to Real Cacophony (1979). It also later surfaced on the James song 'God Only Knows' (I told you they weren't boring indie beigists!), and it wasn't the only word that I learned from that early Simple Minds album either, as there was also another track on it, called...

 'Veldt':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fZ3DloZvhE

On Simple Minds' next album, my favourite of theirs and an unquestionable masterpiece, Empires and Dance, one that had me scratching my head was a track entitled, 'Kant Kino'. These two words, infuriatingly, weren't in the dictionary and it wasn't until many years later that I discovered 'Kant Kino' was the name of an arty cinema in Berlin. I did, however, on opening my Pearls Encyclopaedia, having found nothing in the dictionary, discover that there had been a very influential eighteenth century German philosopher called Immanuel Kant, even though the song had nothing to do with him.

- Kant Kino Cinema, Berlin, 1980

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD8PIOQo8Po

As mentioned, Simple Minds had led me on to Magazine, and as well as the already mentioned word 'Tulpa', I very soon discovered a few other words via them, too, which fascinated my eager mind and imagination. Little did I realise it but the first one had connotations of murder, and potential government cover-ups, as I was to discover.

'Motorcade':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xadpwqooMv4

It's funny how a song can take hold of your imagination or world view, as, to this day, whenever newsreel footage of the assassination of John F. Kennedy is shown or discussed, along with the possibility that it was an inside job by the CIA, the mere mention of the assassination and/or the motorcade that he was travelling in immediately reminds me of this extraordinary song. And what should be a pretty standard, descriptive term is now forever linked with secrecy and tragedy, as is the next one, especially given the heart-breaking fact of global warming that may make what it describes actually a thing of history, like the dinosaurs:

'Permafrost':

This has always been a controversial Magazine song, due to its lyrical content, but when I saw them live in 2009 and Devoto changed the lyric, "I will drug you and fuck you, on the Permafrost," to, "I will drug you and fuck you, on what's left of the Permafrost," it added a strange poignancy to what is already a Hauntology-drenched, mysterious song. And by the way, concerned readers, that lyric is anything but a sadistic male fantasy, which is what Devoto has sometimes been accused of, by music journalists who really don't know better and who should take a bit more time listening to the entire song before shooting their mouths off. Devoto explains, "The song started from the line 'I will drug you and fuck you' and evolved from there. It's supposed to be tender really. Trying to find a little pleasure, a little something, in a very difficult world."

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ2pDwbyxTc

Over time, I then discovered and fell in love with many more fascinating Post-punk bands, including Joy Division, The Pop Group, Gang of Four, Echo & the Bunnymen, among others, and then happily discovered that a few contemporary artists were now wearing their love and influence of those late 70s/early 80s bands on their sleeves. U2 released the Berlin recorded Achtung Baby in 1991, which of course meant I had to go and discover what "Achtung" meant (it's 'attention' in German), and the Manic Street Preachers released what remains one of the greatest albums ever recorded, The Holy Bible, in 1994, and which had words in the lyrics which I am still deciphering to this very day ("Zaprudau," "Lagerstrasse," "Shalom," "Horthys," just for starters). This, along with most Post-punk, was music that either presumed you were intelligent enough to understand it, or would at least have the curiosity and be interested enough to delve further and find out more about these subjects yourself. I certainly feel that this is one of the main reasons why this music means so much to me and has struck me on such a deep level. Music that takes real attention to listen to and is rewarding for that very reason, is always going to have a deeper resonance than the blank nothings that are the lyrical content of the indie bands that were so popular at the time.

And I'm really pleased that I made this connection yesterday, as it has reminded me just how valuable those artists were, and still are, in many cases, in encouraging me to listen to music not only for enjoyment, but also for the enrichment of my mind and soul. And in those days of blanket indiedom in the 90s, where it seemed all the airways were taken up with their out of tune droning and dumbed-down lyrics, these Post-punk artists offered me an escape route in my imagination to a richer, more philosophical world that I was deeply interested in exploring. And I can still, in the autumn and winter, and early spring months, often be found, wearing my long coat as I have done since I was 19/20, strolling by the sea on grey, misty days, headphones on my ears, savouring the sounds and words of these tremendous artists. And, incredibly, their bleak, post-industrial sound and razor-sharp lyrical outlook has even more relevance now than it did back then. Which is quite terrifying, actually.

Happy listening, dear readers. Enjoy your dictionaries.

Until next time,
I remain...

Your Nocturnal Butterfly.

Ghost Blogs

Whilst clicking on some links to blogs that I used to follow in a twenty year old laptop folder, I noticed that some, indeed most of them had been inactive for over fifteen years, and hadn't had any new content. It got me thinking, how can this eerie phenomena be described? Likewise with content on pages that are long out of fashion, such as Tumblr, and Myspace. These webpages were a treasure chest of material, where people shared their music, art, photography, reviews, and interacted with each other. Whither have they flown? It also got me thinking about this page, my very own Nocturnal Butterfly blog, where so much of my heart, soul, intellect and thoughts have found a resting place. For some reason, the idea of Ghost Ships came into my mind, those ancient vessels, with no crew members, sailing the seas across an ocean of water and time. Is that what my blog will eventually become when I am no longer here, or if I am unable to continue adding to it? Perhaps, it will one day in the future find a reader desperately seeking for the words and pictures it contains, and prove to be a life raft for them? A Lost soul seeking harbour, glamorous escape or inspiration, and literary friendship. In a way, it is not that dissimilar from how I imagine authors may have felt about their published books. For there are so many that are hardly, if ever, read by anyone any longer. It would please me greatly, when my psyche/soul resides somewhere in The Great Beyond, to know that somebody stumbled upon what was now my very own Nocturnal Butterfly Ghost Ship Blog and found solace, or, even better, a love of life and inspiration contained within it. Maybe my words would encourage them to write, sing, or whatever their skill and passion is, to a greater height and achievement than they would have reached otherwise. Maybe it will inspire them to embrace their own style, and learn to ignore the naysayers deriding them, and put their ideas where they belong, in the shadows. Maybe mine and Lydia's romance, so often and lovingly documented here, will encourage them to throw caution to the wind, and dare them to experience the deepest connection (for it is scary), with their own beloved? I imagine it would be similar to me when I found an old edition of Stendhal's On Love, first published in 1822, tucked away in a book shop on The Rows in Chester, and which reminded me how precious life is and how it must be grasped at every second, and that cowardice is no response to life's challenges or its opportunities, exactly at the very moment that I needed its precious words the most. But dear old, cranky Stendhal, will have had no idea that his book would find me almost two hundred years later, and in his words find exactly what I was seeking at that moment. It would give me incredible pleasure to consider that my blog may be stumbled across by someone in similar need, in two hundred years' time, and find it was of similar importance to them as Stendhal's book was to me, which in itself was almost like a Ghost Book in the shop where I found it, hidden away at the back, unloved and invisible, struggling to make its existence known against a barrage of much younger, brash and shinier distant cousins.

I have been very much put into the mindset of Hauntology whilst considering this strange phenomena, and particularly the great departed writer and Philosopher Mark Fisher's magnificent, K-Punk blog, which has always been a treasured part of my online reading experience. The K-punk blog is a Ghost Ship that I am only too delighted is still around, just waiting to be discovered by people who will recognise the wonders it contains.

https://k-punk.org/

I also noticed that The Incredible Kulk blog, by one of my favourite music critics, Neil Kulkarni, who tragically passed away suddenly in 2023, is now empty of content, and this saddened me greatly. 

Here are a couple of the links to olde Ghost Ship webpages, that used to be a hive of life and creativity, but now appear to be simply floating around web-space, perhaps hoping that one day they will once again be appreciated by eyes and minds seeking treasures such as they contain.

https://bowiesongs.tumblr.com/

https://chloevanparis.blogspot.com/

And a fascinating article on Ghost Ships...

https://www.abandonedspaces.com/wrecks/ghost-ships.html

Happy Summer Hauntings, my darlings.
Stay Haunted.
xx

Orpheus: Singer of the Soul

- Orpheus,
George de Forest Brush (1890)

According to my mum, I could sing before I could walk, and when I stop and recall my childhood, singing was a supreme constant during that time (and, when health permits, I still sing as much as I can to this very day, although most of that is confined to singing along with songs that I love on the i-pod around our home), and recently I have been recalling with greater intention and intensity some of the singing I used to do. I loved trains as a boy, especially steam trains (my favourite was the gloriously named, racing car green coloured giant Evening Star), and even travelled behind this majestic locomotive a couple of times on steam excursions in the late 70s, and two songs I can recall practically word for word to this very day, are 'Freight Train' and 'Canadian Pacific.' I have practically zero recollection of nursery rhymes or children's songs, as the songs I learned and sang were the songs my mum loved and played constantly, by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Abba, The Carpenters, and the present day contemporary 70s hit singles. It brings a smile to my face to visualise me standing on one of the tables in school, only around four years old, singing songs such as 'Nice 'n' Easy' by Sinatra, 'Jeans On' by David Dundas, or 'Oh boy!' by Buddy Holly, and how wonderfully crazy that actually is. Dear reader, your Nocturnal Butterfly's first school had less than 100 pupils, and when it was raining during lunch or breaktimes, the teachers would get me to stand on a table and sing for everybody. I thought nothing of it at the time yet it gives me a warm glow now. I would also sit on the doorstep of my Mum, Nain and Taid's little terraced house in North Wales where the four of us lived, and passers by would stop and ask me to sing, and in return I would be paid handsomely in items such as chocolate bars or crisps. My portfolio of songs to draw on also grew very quickly, and before long I was also bringing tears of joy/sorrow to my listeners, as I added poignant ballads such as 'Danny Boy', 'Amazing Grace', and hymns such as 'In the Garden' and 'There is a Green Hill Far Away' to my repertoire. Looking back, this astounds me, and I truly do wonder at times how different my life might have been if I hadn't been born with such a chronic, limiting and inherited condition as CF. Don't get me wrong, dear reader, for all its struggles, I adore my life and if one tiny alteration had meant that I wouldn't have met Lydia and/or we hadn't fallen in love with each other then I would never change a single thing in a million years, but in the interest of reflection and curiosity, it does give me cause to ponder. But it's pretty incredible to think that from those humble beginnings, singing for members of the public in a little village in North Wales , at the age of 4-7, were the first steps that led me to being the original Gavroche in the 1985 RSC/Cameron Mackintosh production of the longest running musical in the world, Les Miserables, at the Barbican and Palace Theatre in London, at the age of fourteen. It is quite a journey. And, although my professional singing career was taken from me by my CF, I am starting to realise, especially when I consider the incredible responses I have from audience members when I now occasionally sing at open mics, that my singing really is something unique, and that my voice and delivery genuinely touches many people on a very deep level. Consider this happening from a couple of months ago. I had been invited to sing a couple of songs at a local event that had a "Musicals Theme," and one of the songs I decided to sing was Nat D. Ayer's  'If You Were The Only Girl in the World' from the 1916 musical, The Bing Boys are Here, which opened at the Alhambra Theatre in London and ran for 378 performances. At the end of my performance, a lady came over to talk to me and, with tears in her eyes, said she hadn't heard that song for decades, and told me a very moving story about how her father had once recorded it as a message for her mother, when he was away fighting in the First World War.

As you can probably imagine, this meant a great deal to me, and I was deeply moved. I remember reading in a German Romantic Fairy Tale once that it is actually tears from the listener that the singer hopes to be paid in, not gold and silver, and I certainly felt the accuracy of that very profound truth at that moment. So, bearing all this in mind, it won't surprise you to know that one of my great heroes, and someone who has fascinated me ever since I first heard his name and his story, is Orpheus.

Frieze of Orpheus at Wightwick Manor

Orpheus's legend is well known to many. In the Greece of the ancient world, Orpheus was the person/demigod whose music and singing was so beautiful that even the trees, animals, and even the stones moved closer so they could hear him. Birds would flock round and listen, and he had an intimate connection with all that exists. Warring armies would put their weapons down and stop fighting when he sang and played, and he sang of his immense joy at all creation and celebrated the gods and the seen and unseen aspects of existence. He met and fell deeply in love with the dryad wood spirit, Eurydice, and by his kiss awakened her into energetic life.

Eurydice and Orpheus

But on their wedding day, Eurydice had to flee from an advancing Arsisdaeus, a horny satyr who was attempting to take her for himself, and was bitten on the ankle by a snake she had inadvertently trodden on. She died before anything could be done to help her, and, heartbroken and utterly crestfallen, Orpheus decided to try and make his way down to the Underworld itself in an attempt to persuade the gods to release her back to life. Orpheus's beautiful singing tamed Cerberus, the three headed dog that guarded the entrance, and all other manner of obstacles and finally found himself face to face with Hades, the god of the underworld, and his wife Persephone. His song, both in words and delivery, was so plaintive and heart-wrenching that they agreed to release Eurydice back to him, but only on one condition. He had lead the way and he must not look back at her until they were out of the caves of the Underworld...

Orpheus gets so close to fulfilling his task, but, at the last moment, mistrusting the gods, he glances back to check that Eurydice is with him, and in that instant, loses her forever...

From that moment on, Orpheus is distraught. Over time, he does sing and play his lyre again, but from now on his singing was more reflective and melancholy. Whereas before he had sung with abandon about nature and life, praising gods such as "Zeus Thunderbolt," even though the storms terrified him, and offering hymns of praise to "Laughing Aphrodite", born from the sea and who wove everything together, he now became more introspective, singing of his loss and longing. Where once his singing had produced blissful obliviousness in his listeners, now they also experienced remembrance. He still enchanted everything with his songs, until, one fateful day, he drew the furious ire of a group of intoxicated Maenads (female disciples of Dionysus), who, becoming increasingly outraged when he continuously rejected their amorous advances, eventually tore him to pieces, with Orpheus's head landing in the river, where it initially continued to sing before it fell silent. I was going to add 'forever' to that previous sentence but that wouldn't be strictly accurate. As it is my belief that wherever and whenever beautiful singing is heard and performed, Orpheus is present. His influence remains everywhere and it extends beyond music, as well. He refused to eat meat due to his love of animals, and preferred to fast rather than consume their flesh, and whenever a kindness or a feeling of love and appreciation to our non-human animal brothers and sisters occurs, Orpheus is present there, also. It was his singing and music that enabled his beloved Eurydice to be born from a tree, so he is present whenever love brings an individual(s) to a heightened life. He was a friend and believer in Dionysus, so whenever people gather to celebrate, dance and drink, Orpheus is there, and if the music playing is the very best, he will be the one emanating from the speakers. When great poets write their beautiful, haunting, majestic poems of love, longing, lust and memory, Orpheus resides in the words. He was in intimate contact with the moon goddess, Artemis, and for this reason he knew the allure and mystery of women, and whenever people notice the beauty of the moon, and take pictures of her to share on social media, or when lovers kiss with only that glowing moonshine to light up the scene, he is there, fondly smiling. But most of all, it is through the finest portrayers of the ancient art of singing that Orpheus is found, especially in the scintillating singers that "turn the soul-circuits in us", as Plato once described. You will probably have your own singers that do this for you, dear reader, and mine are my revered artists who bring that human, all-too-human, yet eerily otherworldly quality to their performances:

                                         
                                    Rufus Wainwright:

                               

                                  Billy Mackenzie:

                                   

                                     Meow Meow:

                                      

And, of course, whenever we hear a bird sing, whether that be a humble sparrow, a songstress such as a blackbird or a thrush, even the cawing of a crow or the screech of a seagull, through to the King of Song, the Nightingale, Orpheus is most certainly present.

It is said that when Orpheus was killed, every drop of his blood gave birth to a beautiful, light-coloured flower, which they called The Orpheus Flower, and the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, in his Sonnets To Orpheus wrote:

"Raise no commemorative stone. The roses shall blossom every summer for his sake. For this is Orpheus. His metamorphosis in this and that. We shall not take thought about other names. Once and for all, it's Orpheus when there's singing. He comes and goes."

"Gesang ist Dasein"

(This is singing as being)

Your Nocturnal Butterfly

xx

This post is dedicated to my greatly missed mum, who introduced me to music and taught me to sing, so many moons ago.