Walknotes

Wednesday

Sunrise: 7:25am

The sun isn’t up yet but fallen leaves glow orange under the street lamps. Robins sing out from one side of the street to the other. I didn’t want to walk today, but as the thick mist catches in my hair I realise it’s good to be out.

There’s a car parked in the darkest corner of the car park at the wood. Who would park there? Someone who doesn’t want to be seen.

The wood is dark as I enter, but there are pinpricks of coloured light as dogs with fancy collars explore the undergrowth ahead. And suddenly there are two men: it’s two of the three (secret agents) from the rendezvous the other week. The same man as before says hello while the second says nothing and turns his face away. They head to the car. Where is the third man?

The trees fake a rain shower. The mist is dense and settles, gets to a tipping point and falls.

Thursday

Sunrise: 7:25am

Turn on the wrong light, put on the wrong jacket, make it to the station with 12 minutes to spare. I checked the time before I left. We’re in the season of the winter timetable. At some point the train you want will leave a few minutes earlier and all your careful timing will come to nothing. At some point. But when? Perhaps your careful timing isn’t so careful after all. Every time I type ‘careful’ in this Notes app, a small red exclamation mark emoji appears in the predictive text bar. Red on black, it’s somewhat diminished but still it catches your attention. Like a hangnail snagging on your clothes.

I had a dream about my family. In the dream I learned how to laugh at a sad situation. Tick tick tick. In the civil twilight of the morning I feel like someone has vacuumed my head and sucked out the insides. I can still see the people laughing but I can’t see the humour. The memory snags like the red exclamation mark.

I read Naomi Alderman writing about the tells of AI. She talks about rhythm, common sense, point of view – and this:

“The purpose of writing I think – one of its real, important functions – is to let us know we are less alone. To be able to make contact with another human mind through the words. To sit by ourselves but read someone else and sometimes be moved to tears by the thought: oh thank god it’s not just me, someone else understands. The problem with AI-generated words is that it is so easy for meaning to drop into the gap. It looks like sentences and paragraphs, it feels like it should help, but for some reason it doesn’t. And when you wanted to reach out, instead of feeling understood, you feel even more alone.”

Later in the comments. She replies to someone and says:

“I have quite a lot of horror about it actually, about the loneliness when you wanted connection. Like a horrible childhood nightmare where you run for comfort to your mum but it’s just a dress hanging up. Brrrrrrr.”

Other things

Tomorrow the sun will rise at 7:32am. If you want to understand the power of incremental change, this is it. One or two minutes a day and look where we are. Pick a random week in July and the sunrise was 4:47am. (How did we ever sleep?)

I litter-picked on Monday. There was a lot of it, and honestly, swearing at other people’s trash just doesn’t make the best copy for a weeknote. Hence, no Monday. On Tuesday I listened to a wren sing in the trees at Streatham Hill station as we waited for the sun to rise.

On Saturday I learned the protest song Bread and Roses, and sang it with a small choir. I’ve heard the term ‘bread and roses’ before but didn’t know the history or the poem. It’s beautiful, bread to nourish the body and roses to nourish the soul.

My cousin knew I was likely to be singing folk songs and sent me a gift link to an article he’d read on the FT: What I learnt from Irish folk singing sessions. (Hopefully that’ll work for you? Not sure). So many good bits, like this, about AI not about AI:

Memory is the most important musical skill for singers
…You must acknowledge your place in a chain of people. Credit is always given. People will tell you where they heard a song, or who gave them a song, or after which version theirs is modelled. Because you are often, though not always, singing an old song that has been passed from one memory to another, what you’re storing in your head has been changed and altered lyrically and melodically by the psyches of others. That’s why folk songs warp and change. I once saw Zadie Smith give a talk about how literature is a “transmission of consciousness” from the writer to the reader. Nowhere have I felt this transmission of consciousness more viscerally than at a singing session. 

And this, later in the article, as a reminder (to me) to calm the fuck down:

Sing for the room you’re in
This is something I take with me back to my actual job — writing — where it’s tempting to feel like anything short of Colleen Hoover levels of success amounts to failure (feeling in direct competition with Hoover, who has sold 35 million books, is my particular curse). There’s something special in singing for the room you’re actually in. Those East Clare fiddle players are transmitted, in a sense, to concert halls all over the world via Hayes. Your contribution can ripple out in subtler ways than fame and fortune. Or not. It doesn’t matter. There’s beauty in creating stuff for the people you’re with. 

And this, because what do I know – maybe you hate folk music?

I text a friend observations like these when I’m at sessions or festivals. He usually responds with some variety of: “It sounds insufferable.” You might be reading this and thinking the same thing. Fair enough. It’s not for everybody. The best things aren’t for everyone.