Going for a song

SURPRISE CONNECTION?

It took Barbara by surprise.  It had certainly surprised me.  She came into the kitchen to find me sobbing..  The full works, shoulders heaving, tear tracks shining on cheeks, salt in beard, incapable of giving voice. When I could eventually speak with any coherence it was to say a song had set me off.  Just a song.

A few months before I'd attended a two day course, something my volunteering with Advocard gives me the occasional opportunity to take part on.  This one was held in the zoo (good to have the chance to wander round for free) on Suicide Awareness (any humour was likely to be of the deep black variety...).  In my years of advocacy work I've had several service users tell me about their suicidal thoughts, or past attempts to end their lives, so anything which makes me better equipped to deal with those situations was welcome.  Of course the tutors ran the sessions with great sensitivity, but it inevitably brought up personal memories for many of the students.

So it took me back to 2002 and phone call from Edinburgh Police.  We were still living in England at the time so it was unlikely to be anything but bad news.  My father was dead, having gone out to South Queensferry, walked out on to the road bridge and jumped.  No obvious lead up, no note, no unexpected problems left behind, no reason.  By and large I didn't find that too hard to cope with, bar suddenly bursting into tears in the florist when ordering the funeral flowers.  I'd been away from Edinburgh for over two decades so he wasn't a part of my daily life, which usually makes bereavement even harder to deal with. 

So there in the zoo the memories were just that - memories, nothing that upset me overmuch.  And yet there I was in a kitchen chair, a few months later, overwhelmed in a way I never was at the time of the suicide or at any point since.  What connected song, lyrics, and memory into a script that had me helpless as the denouement?

In May 2018 it was announced that Scott Hutchison's body was found in the Forth.  Hutchison was the lead singer and songwriter for Scots band Frightened Rabbit.  I knew a small something of their music, without having listened often, and had seen, and been impressed with,  Scott when he performed as a guest on a BBC Fringe show a couple of years before.  The link with my father 's death was obvious, but the differences were far greater.  Hutchison was so much younger, had a history of depression and had sent out messages hinting strongly at the action he was about to take.  I was upset for Scott and those who knew him, but it didn't affect me otherwise.  Later I'd play some Frightened Rabbit albums and even the track Floating in the Forth didn't trigger any great flow of emotion.

So surprise it was when listening to the wonderful album "Karine Polwart's SCottish Songbook".  Track five is a Hutchison song.  Swim Until You Can't See Land.  "Are you a man or a bag of sand?" goes the chorus.  I'd listened to the song before.  But there must have been something about the moment.  A few moments alone and at peace, Polwart's clarity of diction and phrasing, a mind receptive to suggestion perhaps?  And then those words had the power to connect, transform and open up a mind taken unawares.

And yet it's no surprise really, is it?  The human brain has an immense capacity for storing data, and prioritising it in a way that allows us to get on our with our lives.  And that same brain can make seemingly random connections, pulling together forgotten ingredients o serve up unexpected flavours.  Traumatic events never leave us, we succeed in overcoming them by letting them sink below the level of our daily consciousness.  And then along comes a song...

Click here for the Karine version of the song.

Click here for the song lyrics.

And click here for the Frightened Rabbit original, with the man himself.  

PS I can listen to the song with pleasure now, both versions, so it really was all in the moment.