Roads to Joy

It was to be a fund-raiser with a difference: yesterday the 10th of March, 2024, was Mothering Sunday here in the UK, and the idea was that mothers might enjoy a little indulgence, while listening to some delightful vintage jazz numbers. So the proprietor of a landmark, destination tea rooms, here in the Royal Burgh of New Galloway, brought most of her tea settings over to the Town Hall, and set up a bountiful spread for the community to appreciate. It’s been over five years since the tea rooms closed their doors, and it was a delight to experience the high tea as it had been served in times past.

I confess that I was rather more keen to imbibe the prosecco on offer than the tea — never been much of a tea drinker, though I did persuade myself to a cup or two to wash down the cream Victorian sponge. But what was most salient to observe was the sheer amount of hard work involved in putting the whole package together.

I’ve been realising that this sort of hard work, for one particular event, is a kind of epiphany in and of itself. Just to get to the event, to have the cheerful groups sitting at table, listening to the old familiar tunes, and smiling together, was a triumph of perspicacity.

In a similar sort of dedicated effort, our neighbour and I are embarked on a serious effort to create a musical concert for performance in the spring of 2025. The narrative and lyrics must be developed, edited, re-written and re-configured, which is not asking so much. The really big ask is the musical composition, to reach some 80 minutes of performance for solo voices and choir. That process is, to my primitive capacity and limited grasp of musicality, mind-boggling! Yet the work is proceeding.

Meanwhile, I’m playing with different images that express the sentiments of the various scenes, and experiencing nothing short of incredulity when the right pictures pop out of FLOW-GPT. It must seem like cheating, not to avail oneself, in this creative endeavour, of a human artist, but the simple fact is that it works. I can cover over the multiple fingers, legs, and other idiosyncracies of the robotic artist, or failing camouflage, I can simply ask again for this or that image. More fun, you might say, than a barrel of monkeys, even though that same barrel will be taking over the verbiage as well in the not-too-distant future. My own job will be redundant, as they say. Perhaps it already is, but I haven’t dared to investigate that gambit. No, I’m much more keen to write things myself. That is, after all, the creativity I crave.

Until then, I’m content to sip a cup of tea, throw back a goblet of prosecco, feed my sweet tooth with cream cakes and chocolate éclairs, and revel in the music around me. And to continue to share in the creation of an extended concert piece designed for the one performance only, with text and notation preserved, if desired, for possible exposure when we developers are no longer here.

Just that it will be there, a body of work, a piece that sings.