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Haven’t been on Twitter since Russia invaded Ukraine. Hot takes, meme noise, and am-i-the-asshole all powerless when that nasty power-bloated shit decided to assert his vision as of course, guns and bombs, death, blood and soil.

Today I’m trying to stay off Instagram. Just for twenty four hours, just for today, just to feel that I have agency or something that feels like agency, though I’m not sure I actually have that agency or where it might begin and end. Me of little faith. I’ve been saying words but have I been saying words, really? Seems to me they’re a cloud of flies, a column of smoke, gibberish spoken from a mountaintop into a ferocious wind, swallowed by some much larger and unknowable conversation, of which I am not a voice. Not a voice at all. What is it that this stuff implies, what of the speaker, can you say it is real, that it has a soul? Could you have a conversation with it?

I’ve been compulsively checking it, Instagram, and it tastes sour, like going hungry through a pile of crisps, desiring more and annoyed at yourself and feeling kinda unwell and both full and empty at once. Crumbs and sticky fingers. I am mad needy, needing pings of love, wanting not to count the total after but to feel each tiny jolt of arriving heart, one by one. Reassure me you little zaps of soothe. The algorithms have us figured out you see, have learned how keen we are to see ourselves seen, to base our sense of ok-ness on validation by likes. Loves even. They’ve stolen our languages of love because they know we want this love deep down we want love and we’re suckers to feeling more of it, a river of love that has no end and maybe no beginning and maybe tomorrow the most love of all if I can only optimise my content. I check my phone for any new messages.

o p t i m i s e

It is raining. Steady heavy mild mist-rain, late September fading greens rain, here comes the dark half rain, shrinking day rain. Swallows still here but on the verge now. Packing their bags. On the wires. Or perhaps they’ve just now set off south? How in the fug is it late September? How now? All an abstraction, this time business. Maybe it’s already March 2028 or June 3045 or whatever. I go back to this again and again, same themes, the strangeness of being and oddness of time and the resistance to actually taking part in the normal schemes of life and living. I feel I run in tight circles, the same thoughts and maybe there is a loop that I have been in since I began. A little toddler bemused that he is already 1 and a half, almost two, and nothing done, nothing done at all.

What is it then? Let’s try to define anxiety without looking it up. A fine challenge for a man who figures out about 1 crossword clue from 20.

Anxiety is a humming shifting of unquiet, a buzz of fearful tension, a microphone turned up way too loud, a barking dog chasing a car’s wheel, grinding gears, a wobble in the spin of a washing machine, static in the nerves, a pot boiling dry, the heater left on, a phone ringing, driving into thick traffic, reading a newspaper, and the bit before you reach to check Instagram or whatever feed you feed.

Later I develop film for the first time in months and 6*6 negs begin to emerge with memories from last year. There are people. Some of these people are now out of reach. And places too, that feel like they were once a big part of me and are now a part of the big strange. And the melancholy that played for the whole summer and before starts to tune up again. It swoops and curves and there is a falling away, an unmooring that is always unmooring and never quite unmoored, falling with no ground below. AM I learning something about the nature of loss?

Work to do, work to do. I need to try and fix the tripod and order more fixer and figure out how to develop lots of film quickly.

I breathe yet and here breathe into that old website that feels a billion me’s out of date and receding.

Work to do. Work to do. We’re always living the dream, it’s just not always the good kind of dream.

Wrote this a few weeks ago and wanted to record a demo over the Christmas. On the last day of the year I managed to record a very basic version that I can work from.

Chords: C#m A (5th) E and C#m B E Bit samey, may need a bridge and some variety

Demo:

Lyrics
Now I’m curled up in a ball
Need to walk since I can’t crawl
Now I’m hiding in the pockets of your warmth
It heats us all

Now I’m searching for a shoe
Need to find a way to you
But what I’m finding is that all I am
Is the sum of what I do

Now I’m running down the stairs
Chasing days and chasing wares
Now I’m counting every step away
From the places my heart tears

And I’m dying to see the light
While I’m trying to seize the day
You cannot win if you will not fight
Or love without losing your way

Now I’m stumbling down a road
Taking heat for being cold
And I’m feeling every metre from
The comfort of your hold.

Now I’m waiting on the street
As the rain falls down in sheets
While my mind is getting soaked from all the
flowing thoughts it leaks.

Now I’m balanced on a chair
Drinking toasts to you somewhere
While my clothes dry out and I wrestle doubt
For the love in the world out there

Now an older man sits near
And he tries to tell me clear
To count my blessings and count my scars
Because they all add up to what we are

Other verse, not recorded
(Now I’m curled up in a bed
waiting for the dreams I’ve fed
On the ways I grow and go toe to toe
With the emptiness and dread)

Come on over. Could be a good song in their somewhere. I like some of the lyrics and how they gel together. But maybe chords are too samey, the structure lacks progressions, and the opening verse is too vague? is it about motivation? trying to get out of inertia, reach for a meaningful life… the usual stuff? Maybe, I guess. The nuts and bolts of the ways it goes, “down where all the ladders start, in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart”

ADIO (original recorded version)

VIDEO (outdoor onetake version with different bridge section)

G Em C D7

It’s hard to start when everything seems so far apart
No centre to turn into when lovers lose their heart
It’s tough to say when exactly night becomes day
When the blackest backdrop begins to fade into grey

I was at a crossroads, at a standstill
come on over, you’ve got time to kill
I was at a junction, out of the running
Come on over now, what is done is done.

I’ve seen the tears fall away through the bad years
Fears burning holes out of dreams hitting low-flying jeers
Of the people from the people to the people on the ground
Social trauma being so blunt packs a punch when you’re down

Every coin’s got two sides and an edge like a sledge,
Money’s money honey drives a big wedge
See the green bills, won’t take you from the ledge
Won’t take you from the pills
Look how the time spills

I was at a crossroads, at a standstill
Come on over, there’s still time to mend
I was at a junction, out of the running
Come on over now,what was then was then

–bridge–

I thought I knew enough to steer clear of dark days
Here in the haze ways veer through the maze
Of the people from the people what the people say they know
Catch you off your guard and hit you; such a low blow

I needed help needed rescuing from myself
Twos company threes a crowd, but one’s lonely- see
from the bottom of a bottle far too often how the world can be so
grey, turn to get away, turning all day

I was at a crossroads, at a standstill
Come on over, there’s still time to give
I was at a junction, out of the running
Come on over now, it can’t be undone.

I’ve been listening to Bring It All Back Home. Had I a better voice, better guitar skills, the smallest echo of lyrical ability, or a pronity to happy accidents, this might be said to be influenced.

Chords are very simple… A D C Blues 12 bar with interlewdeling bits.

Lyrics. Mouthfuls and mouthfuls or rambling lyrics:

Well I parked up my dreams, in a house by a field, called up the the operator, said What do you need?
He said grow your own vegetables, comb your own hair, take your own advice, and don’t listen to what’s there.
I reached out for the medicine, but it fell out of sight, I reached out for everything, woke sweating in the night.

I went and took my temperature, listened to the clock, counted how many heartbeats, It took for tick to tock.
I silenced every idle thought, and read a bunch of books, that showed me all the tricks you need, to have good thoughts and looks,
And I rolled back the curtains, and squinted at the sky, and everyone I had to meet, had already gone by.

I went to the doctor and demanded what he knew. He said I have no secrets now, all them TV shows are true.
I held up my swollen limbs, and wrote my symptoms down, then I put on his rubber gloves, and gave myself a gown.
I imagined up some conditions, and cured them in a flash, I created some prescriptions,aAnd I had some peace at last.

But it turned out to be temporary, too good to be true. By the time I’d done the verse, my world once more turned blue.
I went right back to searching, for there must be a cure, for every little annoying thing, that makes it all less pure.
There’s dirt in the water, and noise on the line, there’s blood in my arteries, and stains on my mind.

But entropy keeps telling me, that all we are is dirt: Wake up your dreams from slumbering, to give it all some worth.
If you really have no little itches, you’d better check your pulse. You might have drifted off again, to a far less interesting world.
Pinch yourself to test this, Kick yourself for luck, try another experiment, Or wallow in the muck.

Some shots taken in and around Baurisheen.
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Mute swans, Cygnus olor, are a common sight on Lough Corrib. Cygnets are rarer, but this couple have a healthy flock of five following bundles of grey. They chirp as they trail after their parents, darting after anything edible and squabbling. The hen is cautious, hanging back while the more confident cob approaches, signalling safe distances with his growling hiss. Adult swans are strong enough to break a leg: they will hiss first as a warning, then start to raise their wings and curl their neck, and should never be provoked, especially with cygnets!

I can tell they are familiar with people as they eye me up and bob around the short piers, balancing their hopes for scraps of food with natural wildness. They have been fed before. The cob snaps at a scrap of wet brown bread that I offer, his ridged beak catching my fingers, all the while signalling his independence with that hiss, his neck raised and eyes watchful of the cygnets as they paddle and chase and chirp.







Mute swans were hunted almost to extinction, saved perhaps by royal decree, and can be killed by pollution such as discarded lead weights (banning these weights saw a recovery in some populations). With luck this brood will avoid the pollution, escape the jaws of pine martens and mink, and moult their way to strong stately white wild royalty.

After two days of heavy rain the Owenriff river is flowing at full throttle. The waterfall that marks the northern boundary of Oughterard is a roaring torrent.

Showery, bright in between. Meeting people that you know randomly on the street. Walking an hour from a broken down car to a locked office. Wandering around doing errands.

Up and down, so it goes. repeat something often enough, it becomes a mantra. The good with the bad. i wrote a song about acknowledging in a time of loss that good things can happen. The cold winter earth harbours the bursting buds of Spring.

Listen:: [audio:http://donalkelly.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/wonderfulThings.mp3|titles=Wonderful Things]

Recorded simply in one take with Audacity, sparse as usual, one effect (reverb) to add some depth.

Chords are as simple. Dm C G

Lyrics:

I wanted to ask you if you feel the same,
I wanted to see for myself as well.
It’s been a while it’s been too long,
The earth has moved the year has gone.

Chorus Wonderful things can happen (X 3)
If we let them…

I got on the bus and I got on that plane,
And life since then hasn’t been the same.
I wanted to fight but I had to wait,
The lights blew out and it grows so late.

I look to the future but see the past,
The sun in my clouds and flags at half mast.
A chink in my armour, a glint in your eye,
I’m seeing your season passing me by.

Now your replies are remote and the calls have stopped,
I’m fully aware of what I have lost.
I wake in the mornings and I can’t get up,
But the birds in the garden will interrupt, saying…

A short short story about two small brats and one big hill.

Serena and Andrew were 7 and 8 years old, respectively, when they climbed the mountain. It took them a full day to get to the top and when they made it they sat down and cried and cried.

In the beginning, they both wanted the mountain. In fact, they demanded the mountain. They followed their mother and their maid around the rooms of the big house asking for it. Serena let her face swell with red rage and Andrew threw a tantrum and then threw toys against the wall before drawing on it with fat crayons. Ever since they watched a documentary about a boy who climbed Kilimanjaro in Africa with his father they wanted a mountain of their own to climb. More than anything. More than the soft fluffy toys piled in the corner and the electric toys stacked on shelves and the touchscreen toys filling their pockets. Much more than the sandpit their mother had ordered. That was far too small. They climbed it and stomped on it and got sand in their shoes and buried toys in it for two hours then started asking for a proper mountain again while depositing sand on the floors and carpets and rugs and chairs and even in the beds.

Their mother hurried from room to room and tried to put the maid between herself and her children. Father was always at work during the day and could only be consulted about very important matters at lunchtime and after seven PM, when he was driving home. When he arrived he would whoosh past the children and his wife, start his computer, and sit at the dining room table with a thick leather notebook by his plate. He went through pages of the notebook and tapped buttons on the computer while he chewed food, making notes with an expensive black pen and every few minutes taking out his phone to make a call or check the time. Sometimes Serena and Andrew sat next to him, and once they dropped his phone in a pot of thick brown coffee, but they were always shooed out before long. The Company was not doing well and father was busy.

So the children went to their mother and their maid and demanded things they knew they could not get. They spent hours deciding on what impossible object they absolutely required. For three months they wanted a pet lion, for six weeks they craved their own castle, and for almost a year (with breaks) they desired a dark dungeon (or an underground jail with proper metal bars and cages) to lock prisoners in.

Of course, they also demanded many things that were possible, but (at least until the Company stopped doing so well), always eventually got. They got the Dalmation puppy and the Siamese kittens, the outdoor playground and the indoor racing tracks, the buckets of chicken and the giant bars of chocolate and the bikes with the silver bells and the walkie talkies and the latest smart phones. So what they wanted above all else was something they could not have, something they could demand and demand until the maid screamed in Spanish and fled, slamming the door; until their mother disappeared into the bathroom wiping her face with scented tissues; until the dog and the cat ran away and never came back, and at least until father arrived home and pulled up his tall chair at the dining room table, turned on his computer, and scratched his head while talking on his phone about the Company. Sometimes he talked quietly, sometimes he shouted angrily, sometimes Serena and Andrew listened and interrupted until their mother appeared again and offered them food or TV.

******************************************************

Everything was different on the mountain. It rained but there was no shelter, and they had no jackets or coats or scarves or hats or gloves or high-tech climbing boots or gps devices or even a compass. There was nobody around to hear them roaring, no matter how red and angry they became, and the wind blew and blew so hard they could hardly hear each other. It was so steep and so windy that they kept slipping and felling in the loose stones, scraping their knees, bruising their arms, and bashing their bodies, and they were so hungry and thirsty that they began to get tired of cursing the maid. It was all the maid’s fault. The maid made the mountain.

Actually. it was the maid’s grandfather who made the mountain. He arrived at their house to talk to the maid one morning while Serena was being particularly angry about not having a mountain to climb. She had climbed onto the sofa after not eating breakfast and was trying to swing off the new curtains.The maid’s grandfather appeared suddenly, just as Serena finally got a good grip and jumped. He was tall and skinny and said nothing as the curtain ripped in two and Serena tumbled down at his feet. He didn’t even bend down to pick her up. Serena cried for a moment then unwrapped the curtain and stood up.

“Who are you?” she demanded. The old man looked down at her with big blue eyes under dark bushy eyebrows and said something that she could not understand. “Do you speak English?” asked Andrew from across the room. “ENGLISH??” he demanded. The old man was silent. His skin was dark and he had a short grey beard. The maid came into the room and began to pull the ripped curtain while scolding the children. Andrew began to blame Serena and Serena jumped up and down on the spot and kicked the torn curtain. The maid and her grandfather spoke to each other quickly. “Speak English!” roared the children.

“You promised us a mountain” said Andrew. “Where is it?” added Serena. The maid tried to hush them and suggested they play in the sand pit again. “It’s boring!” said Serena. “It’s too small!” added Andrew. “Show it to my grandfather” replied the maid. Maybe he can help you find a mountain.

******************************************************

The sky looked so blue from the top. After they stopped crying they started to notice the view. They had climbed for so long yet everything around them seemed higher and far away. They picked up stones and threw them down the side, then argued about which way was home, then suddenly stopped when a giant wasp flew over and landed next to them, clicking its giant wasp jaws and flicking its giant wings. They didn’t scream at all. They started running immediately, and didn’t stop until reached a giant upside-down blue bucket.

The bucket looked very like the one Serena had thrown at the old man much earlier in the day. That was after they had put sand in his hair and his shoes, and before they buried his wallet in the pit. At first he didn’t say much but he became angry eventually, and muttered under his breath as he tried to shake the sand out of his hair and his clothes while he searched for his wallet. That was when Andrew put sand down Serena’s back and she screamed and threw a spade and bucket at him but missed and hit the old man. He went very quiet and stood up and rubbed some more sand off his knees and looked back at the house. “Speak English” Serena said severely. The maid’s grandfather bent down on one bony knee and looked her right in the eye. His own eyes were so blue and deep and wide open, that for a moment Serena said nothing.

The giant wasp thumped against the upturned bucket and tried to squeeze under it. Its black eyes pushed under the gap and its legs rattled against the thick plastic. It made a buzzing noise so loud that the children covered their ears and yelled. It had almost squeezed inside when suddenly it stopped. The enormous head disappeared and there was a deafening roar of wings and it was gone. For a moment there was silence, then the ground collapsed and an absolutely massive cat knocked over the bucket and picked Andrew up in its long razor sharp teeth.

It looked like the cat that the children threw in the pond to see how well it could swim, but it was as big as a house. That cat belonged to the nasty neighbours but it often visited their home because the maid used to feed it bits of leftover food. There was always lots of leftover food. Serena and Andrew liked to argue at mealtimes and throw their food. Their mother liked to nibble little meals and leave behind the fatty parts. Their father liked to forget to eat his food and leave lots of it to become cold and hard on the plate. The children knew that the maid liked to feed the leftovers to the birds and cats, and demanded that she stop. Even after their mother agreed she had to stop, they suspected she secretly fed them. But it would take a whole cow to feed this giant cat, or maybe a whole herd of cows. Andrew screamed as he dangled from the teeth by his pants while Serena screamed as she dug herself out of a pile of stones and ran in circles.

The blue eyes were so dark and deep that Serena seemed to freeze. The old man was whispering something in a strange language. It didn’t sound English or Spanish or like anything she had heard at school. His eyebrows furrowed and met in the middle. He stared right at her seemed to look through her while he patted the ground with his long fingers. When Serena disappeared with a small pop Andrew scrambled over. He tried to open his mouth to exclaim but felt the air being sucked out of it as he disappeared with a pop too. He didn’t hear the pop, just the rushing of air and a deep voice that seemed to be stretching out say “Have your mountain!”

******************************************************

The vast cat had decided that Andrew was a toy and tossed him around for a while. The more he yelled the more excited the cat became, expertly dangling him from between her teeth, flinging him in the air, pretending to ignore him and concentrating on cleaning her paws, then pouncing abruptly as he came close to shelter. Serena stopped watching from behind the rocks and thought deeply about running down the steep mountain. She tightened her laces and was about to set off when a dog as big as a hotel came crashing up the slope and sent her, the cat, and the exhausted Andrew flying through the air.

After the pop and before they started climbing, the children were feeling pretty satisfied. The old man was gone, the boring garden with the boring little pile of sand was gone, the big boring house with their big boring parents was gone, and a huge mountain towered over them, blocking out the sun. Now they had done it; gotten the ungettable. They had never even met someone who could so this- it was a triumph. It looked so high that Serena wasn’t sure about climbing it. She thought about going back inside but couldn’t see where the house was any longer. Andrew was already scrambling up. It was their mountain, it had to be climbed. She raced after him and pulled his arm, then overtook him and said “last one up is a rotten egg!”

There was a lot of noise and crashing and stones flying everywhere when the hotel-sized dog caused an earthquake at the summit. In fact, neither of the children knew exactly where they were, and wandered around in the mess for some time. Eventually Andrew arrived at the lip of the upturned bucket while Serena was knocked over by the tail of the colossal dog. He turned and eyed her, then sniffed her with a nose as big as a car, pulling her off her feet. She stood up and started to move but he followed with his eyes and sniffed again. After standing up and falling over several times Serena gave up. She tried shouting but all her shouting was gone. She tried to cry but her eyes were dry. She looked at her hands and her feet and back down the mountain and wished… she wasn’t sure what she was wishing for. The dog looked away, panting. A drop of saliva fell from his mouth and landed with a heavy thump nearby.Then a gust of wind blew. There were new sounds, and the sun was low. It was getting late and cold. Huge shadows like dark clouds appeared high above and covered the sky. The dog was gone. Serena didn’t look up as one of the clouds began to drop closer and closer. She only looked when the blue eye was so close she could hear its blink. It seemed to fill all of her view. A mixture of wind and thunder seemed to say “there you are.”

The children were not happy about been plucked up by another giant creature, but had resigned themselves to this pattern and were at least less unhappy than before as now it was a hand and fingers that lifted them into the sky. After a lot of jolting and more strange sounds and different bright lights and the rush of air, they were set down again. Now they were looking at the blue eye again. It stopped blinking and seemed to focus. Everything went very still. Then there was a sound somewhere between water splashing and paper tearing, and the world around began to stretch and warp.

******************************************************

Serena and Andrew sat very quietly on the edge of the couch for a long time. They sat and listened to their frantic mother who seemed to be angry and happy at once. They sat and watched the maid and her grandfather as she looked at him and he at them. Once when he knew nobody could see he winked. They sat until their father arrived home and didn’t turn on his computer. After he hugged them and spoke for a long time and marched them to bed they recovered their voices. There was a lot of fuss about the scratches and bruises, and question after question tumbled from the adults. After an hour telling the truth Serena began to add more realistic details to avoid the disbelieving responses. Eventually both admitted to running away and getting lost. They stopped mentioning the wasp and the cat and their terrible ordeal. Eventually they stopped accusing the maid’s grandfather and agreed that lies were indeed an awful thing. Finally they lay there with the same resignation as before, and even though both had neglected their homework again, their brains hummed with a new sensation of something lived and something learned.

For a few days their mother was surprised and the maid delighted with the children. Their tantrums subsided from savage storms to short breezes, and their eyes looked out at everything with a different kind of attention. The house was filled with calm. Of course, everything changed when Serena hopped up on a chair beside her busy father while he tapped away at his computer and wrote his notes, and stared at him in an intense way with her bright blue eyes wide open until there was a distinct popping noise and he disappeared.

At my desk I always tried to have a few black pens, a pencil, ruler, eraser. In between or after getting through some book corrections before the kids arrived I created doodled away at some exercises, mostly to focus myself on what I wanted to cover and what students of some class should/could know.

Each doodle was for a particular class. Some students love to draw and colour, while older ones tended to like puzzles. After I had amassed a little stack, I randomly gave activities out to students who had finished book work.

Some doodles were reviews of material covered, while others targeted problem areas that I found cropping up repeatedly with the Korean students. There, they’re or there? I, me, my? Its or it’s? These are simple though compared to the minefields of English idioms and prepositions- especially prepositions combined with verbs. Jump in, jump around, jump on, jump off, jump at. I noticed students getting frustrated when they reached a certain level and starting to chip away at the endless ocean of the idiomatic or regional English phrases.
Pronunciation causes problems too. For starters, English is incredibly variable whereas Korean is far more predictable.

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through? ((Richard Krogh http://www.spellingsociety.org/news/media/poems.php))

In Hangul, the Korean alphabet, there is one character for R and L sounds, and no character for F or V. Also the sound of ‘SEA’ does not occur- it will be pronounced as ‘SHE’. I used tongue twisters like ‘She sells sea shells on the seashore”, or “Four fat frogs fought five fit fish on the first Friday of February”, or “Learn library rules really well” regularly to practice the sounds. I used two words from the last one, “library” and “learn”, to test new or advanced students to see what level they were at. “Learn” seems particularly difficult for Korean students.

Another note on pronunciation is that the younger students were often better at getting the sounds, while older ones (12+) were much harder to motivate into really making an effort and tended to stick with a heavy Korean accent. I think it was embarrassing at that age for already shy students to speak with a foreign accent. Those who had mastered them at a younger age were happy to oblige.

Towards the end of my time in this school I introduced songs and music. I was afraid that it would be too distracting, that students would go into party mode, and in the close connections from student to student to parent to Hakwon boss, I would soon be reprimanded. I had some great classes though, especially with songs like the Lion Sleeps Tonight ((http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8milJNj_W0)), where we wrote all of the words on the board and roared it out. While a couple of guys didn’t participate, the majority, including me, got caught up in a feelgood song about a lion-surrounded African village that was first recorded way back in 1939. Another great one is Fool’s Garden “The Lemon Tree”. Everyone knew the song so we learned a couple of verses- I tried to get students to tell me the words as we listened. I also made doodles where I wrote out most of a song’s lyrics and got students to fill in missing words by listening. Simple dictation, but I tried to pick songs that they liked, and even get them to pick the songs.

Doodling was a way of learning for me, for keeping my sanity and interest while machine-correcting books and homework, a way of coping with lulls in book activities in the classroom, and a kind of reward for students, as I tried to make them whimsical and fun and local (using local places, events, and people). Of course some went down like lead balloons and had to be abandoned, but others worked well.

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LISTEN!: [audio:http://donalkelly.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/GoodTogether.mp3|titles=Good Together]

Another day, another song. This time I returned to Audacity, downloaded the latest version along with the package of plugins and the decoders (to export mp3s). I used Fruityloops to create a basic rhythm track after I had played around with the song structure. I wanted to have a feel of change in the song- I know a lot of my stuff finds a comfortable spot and stays there- this time I wanted a different progression. I ended up with a verse/rhythm section that (I think) contrasts a bit with the chorus, though only using the regular chords in the key of C; no sevenths, and nothing diminished.

It was originally called ‘Broken Shores’, and about self exploration and release, but I wanted a more positive life-affirming message, and a bit of the softheart stuff to bleed into the nonspecific detail.

The original chorus went

And I see way down inside me a place to explore once more
Untie me let me arrive we cannot survive these broken shores

But it was too similar to the verse, so eventually I came up with the idea of being ‘good together,’ realizing that after all the baggage and stress and change, some things are worth fighting for, and that life is illuminated by moments- breaks in the cloud. So the new chorus is

I’ve been feeling inspired by moments in life that push through the heavy weather
and I’ve been hoping to fly been waiting in line I know that we’re good together.

The verse then has its own structural pattern- “when you XXXX you can’t XXXX, ” which seemed strange at first but sounded good to me in lines like

When you leave you can’t leave, Behind the scenes of empty

Where leave is followed by leave behind. As usual I’m not sure exactly what it all means. But knowing what everything means is not the domain of art. Foraging in the darkness and being struck by a flow of creative juice, expressing something intangible, something that touches on or captures, distils or engraves some measure of something that connects to others, Actually I would struggle to conceive of a description of musical art that accounts for everything from the latest billion viewed idol tune to the raging fuel of death metal. I cannot even ennumerate the genres. BUT, again, back to the main direction of the post, being the song, this song, from the latest round of foraging in the ether.

Am F G
When you stop you can’t stop
starting things you can’t drop, over the hill and down again
When you move you can’t move
Till you find your own groove, time to kill, lose to win

C F Am G
And I’ve been feeling inspired by moments in life that push through the heavy weather
and I’ve been hoping to fly been waiting in line I know that we’re good together

When you wait you can’t wait
To get out on your own way, to boldly go to slowly grow
when you fake you can’t fake
the secrets that you won’t take, heart to sleeve, half believe

I’ve been feeling inspired by moments in life that push through the heavy weather
and I’ve been hoping to fly been waiting in line I know that we’re good together

Dm C Am G
What we do when we are doing something new is just a novelty
no matter how she speaks, we we play this game for keeps

When you leave you can’t leave
Behind the scenes of empty
Glasses left on floors unswept
When you hope you can’t hope
For more than you have let go
Your open hand I understand.

we can go through the lists and tick off the things
that we never did and see what we missed and
start a new chapter call it whatever as long we’re good together

I recorded the guitar rhythm track using the fruityloops beat as a metronome, then added vocals, and a few layers of them for the choruses. I went back to FL to fill out the beat, then exported it and imported it into Audacity. A bit of low end comes from another acoustic track with only the E and A strings used- I cut out the highs and boosted the lows with an EQ plugin. I also compressed a little and added some reverb. The short solo uses my Telecaster through a Pod II, I just played and replayed on the same spot on the neck till something sounded half right.

I tried to space everything out in the mix and fill the spectrum more than I normally do After reading Guerrila Home Recording I was more confident using the effects but I tried to err on the side of caution and keep them pretty low, panning them left or right to balance things out.

Rain tumbles down. From the swift clouds that scrape over the maamturks it pours onto the boggy land below. The wipers of the aging Peugeot van snicksnack across the windscreen as I drive the winding road north from Oughterard. With no radio reception, I try a CD but the speakers are tinny and irritating. Visibility is poor, and the road is hard to make out; the sky melts with the forground in a bustling wash of grey and water.

I turn left at Maam Cross and head up the hill that leads down to Maam valley. At the top I stop and roll down the window, letting drops of rain splatter inside while I hold my camera out to try and catch the swollen gushwhite streams that race down the gray-green mountainsides. Peaks disappear into a white blanket of mist.

At Keane’s pub I go right, onto the Cong/Clonbour road, but I swing the van round after a few kilometres. I just wanted to go until I caught sight of the North-West corner of Lough Corrib, a broad finger of the lake that curls around the Hill of Doon and on to Maam. Between the end of Glann and here there is only a short stretch, but no road; only the Western Way hiking route tracks across the soft ground and skirts up around Lackavrea mountain. I stop again and this time get out, risking the wet to see what the day looks like to the lens. Out under the shadow of the mountain on a small island sits Caislean-na-Circe, Castle Kirk, which served Grace O’ Malley well as a safe haven around 800 years ago. The corrib has fished well this year, healthy catches of brown trout despite the explosion of zebra mussels that coat the floor.

When the light is low and clouds cover the whole dome above like this, the greens and browns of the earth show little contrast but thick dull colour. We are in the last gasp of July and every inch of fertile ground is a riot of growth. These hills were mined for lead and silver in the 19th century, hauled to Galway city across the lake. Only a derelict crushing plant can be seen now from the road.

Back through the junction at Keane’s, and straight on this time heading for Leenane. There are few cars on the road, a bad evening for driving, and I make slow progress. The road meanders like a stubborn river through scraps of conifer forest and acres of soggy fields. Left and right rise steep hills up which run brave stone walls. Leenane is living up to its reputation as the wettest place in Ireland. The deep cut of the fjord is hidden by the heavy mass of grey. Outside the van, in the whip of the wind, I can smell the salt of the Atlantic.

After Leenane the road rises up again from sea level then swings away from the coast, into the more sheltered valley of lakes where Kylemore Abbey draws in the crowds to its postcard buildings and gardens. This time though I only stop at the nearby waterfall and sprint to the low bridge to see its short white fury crashing down. Designed by James Franklin Fuller, and built by Mitchell Henry from 1867 to 1871, it was later sold to the Bendictine nuns to cover gambling debts by the Duke of Manchester.Almost self sufficient thanks to carefully maintained gardens, it was until 2010 a secondary school for boarding and day students. My great-Uncle John Joyce worked in those gardens for most of his life.

Camera splashed again, back in the van, it takes more than a few extra seconds to start, but eventually kicks into its usual diesel grumble, and I pull out and drive the short distance to Tullycross, then down to meet the coast again to Mullaghlos. From the front of my cousin’s house you can see the broad Mweelrea mountain rise 814 metres over Killary harbour. Cnoc Maol Réidh in gaeilge: “Smooth bald hill”. The highest peak in Connaught. Clare Island, Caher island, Inisturk. Inisbofin too far west to make out. If you look directly north you can normally see the cliffs of Achill almost 40km away, towering over Keem bay under Croaghaun mountain. Not now though. It is late, dark, wet, and windy.

The cosy stovehot modern cottage is a welcome haven, sheltered on one side by a deep cut into a high bog bank. It is too far from the road to hear the odd car bumping by over the potholes, but the wind whistles through the poles and around the gables, and the ever present heaving waves throw low rumbles up the grassy cliffs. Even at night the wildness of the terrain can make its presence felt.

It is almost 24 hours before I get back outside with camera in hand. I spend the next morning and afternoon typing, some office work to help recover some lost documents. I can see the shifting weather bustle across the seascape from the North-facing window. Rain spits and spatters in short showers, hurried by the west wind.

It is evening again when I call it quits and ignore an empty belly to scramble with the wrong shoes up a waterlogged bog road. The epic rambling clouds throw wide shadows but pockets of warm light separate them. It is a desolate landscape, soft acidic soil, and virtually no shelter from the salty knife edge of the wind.

I pass the carcass of an old tractor, metal eaten, almost motheaten, disintegrating under the elements.

The sun has dropped below the horizon, but as I leave I see flashes of silver in a dark pool. Jumping across the seaweed covered rock I make out a mass of sprats whirling in the water, thousands of tiny fish clumped in a ball. A few seconds later I see larger shapes flashing through, dark daggers slicing the school. Atlantic Mackerel, probably a whole shoal, chasing the massive numbers of sprats into the jagged bays.

I clamber up the steep slopes, and risking the fading light, borrow an old rod to see if I can get back down before the mackerel disappear again. I tie a cast of 5 hooked feathers onto the gut and string a small weight at the bottom. Sliding down to the rocks one more time, I hurry back to where I had last seen them. The sprats are still there but no sign of their predators. After a few casts and only lumps of seaweed to claim I move further out onto a bigger rock. The “monach rock” we called it as kids. After a few more futile efforts, I am ready to give it up, then suddenly thump thump on the hook, the line zippping left right, white bellies swivelling and darting in the green, and the satisfying tension of a rod with fish. I haul up two mackerel flapping on the hooks, their flesh punctured by steel hooks. With the rod high they struggle against the grey sky, gasping, furiously beating. But I have started so I finish, dropping them down, pulling out the barbed hooks, bashing their heads against the rock. Some recently devoured sprats fly out of their mouths with the force of the blows. With the nightfall and the tide changing there is no time. Out again with the feathers, and another strike, this time four fish straining.

Twenty-four mackerel and one pollack later I call it quits. I have enough to eat and share, and enough fish blood and dying fish twitch for one day. It is hard to see much as I fill the plastic bag and tackle the climb. I use the rod as a walking stick, and the bag as a counterweight. Going over the top a full moon emerges like a torchlight.

I gut the fish at an outside sink, cutting off the tails and heads and putting the organs into a bucket.

The next day we cook up some of the mackerel for a late lunch, baked in the oven in foil, eaten hot with boiled potatoes and peas. Another overcast showery low pressure has moved in, so another day mostly indoors, bar a short trip to Clifden in my cousin’s Ford pickup. A tree surgeon by trade (http://www.westcoasttreesurgery.com/), he points out interesting trees and their properties. In a part of the country with few trees, and hit hard by the heeldragging recession, it is surprising how you see forests of detail emerge as they are spotted, and realize that there is still busy work for a busy man. A fine oak or ash, a slow growing beech, a scots pine or a blackthorn. Even after a decade and a half of hard labour climbing and cutting, sawing and chipping, he still has a grá for trees, a curiosity and interest that will outlast the current economic stillness.

Clifden is wet but alive. It has an energy and art that mark it as a cultural and tourism hub, far as it is from a city or industry. Small galleries, cafés, and hotels survive here, hibernating a little during winter but sustained by a steady stream of interested visitors. Signs point to the spot where Alcock and Brown crash-landed their Vickers Vimy in 1919, an indecorous but momentous conclusion to the first transatlantic flight from Newfoundland. A dog slumbers outside the door of a pub. People scurry for shelter between the shops. Paintings, Aran sweaters, Leprechaun and shamrock strewn mementos. But also Lidl, Aldi, Supervalu supermarkets, hardware stores, a hospital.

Late in the evening I hit the road again, taking a different route by traversing the Inagh Valley from east to west, driving along a dividing line between the Maamturks and the Twelve Bens. Grassy Benbaun is followed by stark Bencorr’s jagged peaks jutting above Lough Inagh. Everything is shrouded in mist, the low grass and rushes bent by the wind and rain. Bogs are soft and wet after a summer of heavy rain, and the rivers are full and angry after the last few days. This is a bleak road in bad weather. It was named the famine road to us as kids, and along its sides are supposedly buried the bones of those who fell in the desperate years of the famine. It is still barely populated. The wipers snicksnack across the windscreen again. Hard to believe that the evening before had been so bright and colourful. Unpredictable, fickle, a land exposed. Does the sun shine between the showers or the showers fall between spells of sun? On such distinctions seems to rest the mood and conversation of those who live under this weather and among these peaks.

July 15th, 08:00, Busan, Korea.
Torrential morning. Last morning. Feels like no plane could get up out of this rain. But bags to pack and a bike to box, already hot and sticky and late. Time for a haircut? Up first for breakfast, and then a couple of hours of folding, loosening, taping, stressing, and hurrying.

11:30. Suddenly realising that there is no airport bus at 2:30, plans change. Now I will aim for a bus to Seoul and then another to Incheon. Still torrential, the monsoon rain hammering down and engulfing the streets. Still, under a flimsy polka dot umbrella I venture forth in flipflops for the hair shop. Thunder raps above, streams of water gushing over my feet below. How could a plane take off in this weather? Kwang Hee is already there when I arrive, confident, unapologetic, expert customer. The barber is young, friendly, interested. He asks questions and namedrops in English. Guinness, Baileys, Tupac, Eminem. An hour goes easy while the storm continues.

12:30. I brave the cloudburst again to get to Homeplus. My last trip to the giant supermarket, topspeed pace through the aisles looking for more Scotch tape and bubblewrap. Some Dr. You Energy bars too, and a cheap Japanese raincoat that I can throw over the bike box it if is still raining when we leave. Back to the hair shop, the road well under water at the crosswalk, I put on the raincoat, though I am already wet. Despite the water it is still hot.

2:00. Leaving Sajik, four of us carrying bags, the dog let out too and running up the street. Nerves tense and taut, caught in the swirl of lastness that pervades every step, each footfall the first of a long large gap. The rain at least has relented, and though the sky still threatens we make it to the subway unsoaked. Then another goodbye, and a subway trip to Nopo. A friendly Ajumma tries to get me to sit and jokes about the weight I bear. But I stand and wait, and in Nopo wait again, a ticket bought, in paris Baguette with bad appetite.

02:40. Leaving Busan, for Seoul, on a full bus. Straining out of the window to see the waves, eyes cursedly heavy, no glory in this departure. Heavy moments. I can’t sleep on the bus. It pulls out onto the highway and heads Northwest. I watch the city slowly recede and between hills and tunnels see farms and fields, rivers and trees.

We stop at a service station, a 15 minute break, then continue the heavyhearted journey, arriving in Seoul Express station after sundown. I struggle with my bags, struggle to go to the bathroom, struggle to find the bus to the airport. I find it only after asking three people and 30 minutes in the rain carrying uncomfortable bulk on a busy street. Eventually bus 6020 appears and now I am leaving Seoul, another hour through the megapolis and out to Incheon.

21:30. I make it to the airport and find the Emirates check in desk. There’s a long queue, and as I wait my baggage anxiety grows. Two arabic men are arguing with an official over visas to Yemen. Some people are opening bags to repack. I have little money and an empty Korean bank account. But that stress evaporates when the friendly Emirates girl lets everything through. She puts Fragile stickers on the bike and points me to the oversize baggage counter. Everything is fluid now. The plane then is taking off. It is real. I get talking to an American who lives in Korea and is going to Dublin to meet a friend then on to Glasgow for a convention. We become airport buddies, chatting away an hour over expensive food. He speaks real Korean, has a Korean wife, a university job, an unfinished phd, and a child.

23:55. The Airbus A380 seems new and full. In my aisle seat I have no view through the window as we taxi out then hurl down the runway and up into the sky. Leaving Korea. I can feel the strings and threads straining as we rise, and though my mind is still there the distance roars between; a gulf opens and widens and half the world crosses beneath.

Dubai, 04:20 local time. After over 8 hours in the air, now 2 and 30 in the bus Dubai airport. I change some won for Euro and buy 200 Marlboro cigarettes. Not for me but they will save money for someone else. I go for a €5 hot chocolate with Gabe the lecturer and wander the busy cosmopolitan expensive shops. It is 33 Celsius outside but too cool indoors for my light shorts and T-short.

Dubai 07:00. Now a Boeing 777 to Dublin. Lots of kids, more familiar accents, two Tipperary GAA jerseys. I watch Tintin and TT3D: CLoser to the Edge. On the A380 I watched Haywire and, damn, forgotten. An inflight movie half watched stranded in my memory somewhere.

Dublin 12:15 local. Arriving in Ireland. Down through the grey onto the runway with an assured thump and roar as the flaps twist up. Slowly slowly we move across the concrete, before the people finally start to filter out. Through the passport control with the ease of a local, then on to wait for my baggage. My bike trundles through first, and later my backback. When I get through the departure gates Aidan is there, unexpected, a face as familiar as my own waiting. We head to a local bar and tackle a huge lunch. Bacon and cabbage no less, with lashings of tea. The bar is old and musty. Familiar familiar familiar.

Dublin 2:15. I horse the bags onto the Citilink bus. Buying a ticket s refreshingly easy, and I relax as we pull out and through the port tunnel into the city centre before heading west on the Motorway. The low city of Ulysses then the soft quiet fields of the midlands rushing by. Already my headspin is groping and finding the patterns of a lifetime, settling into the grooves of an often played record.

July 16th, 17:30, Galway, Ireland. I can count down the miles, as we come in the Dubilin road, past Merlin Park and GMIT then down towards Lough Atalia and up Bohermore. I scan for changes and see the same shapes and patterns looking back. These places are as much inside me as outside, well etched on the brain and easy to coax out, memories lapping thick on the streets and buildings. Home is history, wrapped around your core.

We pull into the Coach station. I have no phone but there is no stress. It has faded over the final miles, and now everything is as it was, but fresh and new at the same time. I am waking from a long dream, or plunging into a new one and too tired to fight, though for a short while I am stranded between the two, getting a glimpse of one from the other, foreign dweller and local son, both ideas easily lost in the stream of strangers that traipse up and down streets and cities.

The Arts festival is underway, tourist fill the few main streets, and the traffic is building when Dara arrives and we load up for the last leg.

An hour later I am at home, arriving as a surprise and basking in the newness of the old. The wet weather has lifted and a cool evening casts rich blues and greys over the calm lake. The garden is scattered with flowers in bloom. The grass is cut, the two dogs are lazing in the house. Greetings and welcomes, respite from the many goodbyes, before a meal that hits the stomach like it never left.

Only a day in transit, but a year and more of differences dissolve as my feet step into the same shoes. The little changes, chips in the chinks, are seen at first but melt into the background. I try to cling to the appreciation of what has passed and is passing, but it is hard to force a mind that relaxes at every glance into the known and the accepted.

It feels colder than the reports, the promises of July burdened by skies of rain and mist. The summer has dragged I’m told, a few spits of kind soft green weather between the canopies of grey. Still, the beauty is there, if under a soggy morning’s breath you choose to step onto the earth.

Hopes willing, hearts desiring, go filling up with rising sun

It is a time between times, a period loosened from definitions, perhaps the leading pause of a comma, perhaps the jarring halt of an unexpected full stop. The wishwash of my mind has yet to settle, it balances on a sloping back above the scuttling feet of an earnest anxiousness, that hither thither bounces blindly against the way’s walls looking for delivering doorways.

But life is marked by fleeing moments and sustained by minor victories. What say another badly recorded poorly performed song tackily stuck to the running hook of four thousand photos. What say another unpolished lump of shot loosed into the pregnant airs of late summer. A summer sodden, yet full of the steady green growth of leaf and shoot, tree and root.

Across the lake another shiver of wind stirs the surface under a thin sheet of mist. Overhead roll Atlantic born clouds laden with heavy drops. Ready to fall, ready to burst and drench. Under the rolling bulkheads of a cumulus or the crest of a blanket of stratus, I pause in the month and squirm to claim a grip on the rough outline of myself.

What seems without effort is already in motion under the moment of some external force. The beat of a heart; the rise of the moon; the guarded power that drains the spool.

Rain is hammering down outside, striking its damp intricate melody on the cacophony of roofs and streets. How could it be rainy season again? Where did the year go?

The shapeless sprawl of Busan took a long time to imprint its layout, and deliver me from following scribbled notes of subway stations and getting off at wrong stops, to cycling alone across the city late at night without a map. On my first day I was afraid to leave my tiny apartment for fear of not finding it again. By now I have a sense of orientation with the landscape, and with the food too, and the people. Sadly I cannot traverse the language for any distance beyond a motley crew of common words. At best I can read hangul painfully slowly in the hope that the key words are Konglish.

In less than two days though I will be gone, assuming I make the airport on time and my trail through the international jet traffic is routine. Then the process of reverse culture shock will begin, with restraint of head bowing, an Irish diet of potatoes, and the pain of all of those high prices. Goodbye cheap dentists, taxis, snacks, alcohol, Internet, haircuts, and doctors. Hello the dismal fiscals of the Eurozone.

Last week I spent a day with my camera and tripod in Nampodong, in a vague effort to capture something of its detail and motion. Over 3000 pictures, 16Gb of jpegs crammed onto the memory card, two drained batteries, and many bemused stares later I settled into a cafe and fought with my laptop to stitch them together into a messy montage. Over the top went a song I recorded right before I came to Korea, a demo quality DIY effort inspired by the search for meaning and progress that scatters us from home in the first place.

As now, it was raining then in Nampo, but only in fits and bursts, and a steady breeze dragged the drops and their clouds and mist from the open sea over the squat mountains, whose lower shoulders support mazes of steep streets and dense hives of irregular houses. From the water’s edge at Jagalchi, among the camera-carrying visitors and fish-gutting workers, I waited and watched the weather roll across Yeongdo to the east and Amnam to the west. The bridge from Songdo appeared and disappeared in the fog. Boats scurried across the port from every direction, cranes rose and spun over hulls pulled from the water.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Behind me an ajumma in a big black saloon runs over an ajoshi’s foot. He yells and beats her windscreen with his umbrella as she struggles to realize her error. Faces momentarily turn to look then gradually go back to catching, poking, gutting, selling, buying, or eating something that until recently swam, crawled, or drifted in the open water. Every inch of the market is laden with the ocean’s bounty. Some flopping, some already fried, they all wait the same fate. Fat mackerel slice easily under quick steel blades.

Only a street’s width from the sea the clamour of the fish market begins to crossfade with heavy traffic and high street shopping. Another intricate maze of detail and motion takes hold, another forest of competing crowded stalls, cosmetics shops, chain cafés, and busy restaurants. Here too there is a restless energy. Competitive and hurried, with a stratified social structure that is cohesive, conservative, and consumeristic, the streets are alive under the canopy of chaotic wires.

This mass of humanity seems comfortable when concentrated; gaggles of students, herds of tourists, a stream of color-coded couples, and the odd old grandfather pulling his stacked cart of cardboard to earn some minor measure of paper money. The latest overproduced pop tunes try to drown each other out from each well-staffed well-branded business, though most heads are slightly bowed, not out of respect, disregard, or politeness, but to catch the light best from the necessary smartphone.

A few more streets north and the ground climbs to ascend to Yongdusan park. Above this rises Yongdusan tower, its lower half currently smothered by scaffolding. From its lofty vantage I rise to get a broader view, and try to pick out familiar details below. Now I can see beyond Nampodong, from the ship strewn sea over the streets thrown on streets up to the weather satellite of Gudeoksan. I find the construction site opposite my just-left apartment (another health center), and a little further on the area where the school I taught in will be on the second class of the day. I can name the students and the books they will be using.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

After a year soaking in the detail it is still hard to get a broader grip on Korean life. A year of long evenings of English classes, hundreds of hakwon students willing or dragged, weekends of food and fun and trips to new places, and slowly, slowly the four distinct seasons giving way to each other as the clock ticked one rainy season to the next.

After a day spent chasing the tails of everyday lives followed a few of rest and easy leisure. My classes taught, my visa edging to expiry, my plans for the future as cloudy as the monsoon season’s grey temper, I will catch a flight with a headful of Busan, and will dream scattered farewells in the night from a tin tube going west in the sky. Maybe I will be back- I cant say. But it is better to head home with a heavy heart, because if leaving has no cost, then the stay has not been of value.

I expect a rainy welcome in Dublin, and a sharp recognition of myself in a familiar world. Another bus to bring me further west to Galway, maybe more rain once over the Shannon, and welcome exercise for the green cones in my eyes. Family, friends, sleep and jet lag, and anxious promptings about what to do next. Has this thrown stone another stretch to skip?

The long span, a slice of sky stretched from border to border, time ticked by a bird’s wing on the wind. Morning shuffling from door to door, knocking quietly with soft insistent knuckles, on the heads of the dream-enclosed. Spring has been chewing for a while, and finally it is getting to grips with the hard frozen meat. But even as it gets soft, it gets hot, and already the sticky throat of summer waits impatiently to swallow.

Circles anon, according to the rules as we best can explain, to be looked up and presented unpondered. Time is what clocks measure indeed, and from the three dimensions we struggle to gather, maybe more. Existential, the pull and pulse of sensation, light bouncing off a cold surface. Animal, the heat inside, anger under a dry tongue, heavy gulping breaths when the valves are all open. Social, labelled practitioner of a numbered generation, aware of the many strands of interaction.

Get into a corner and turn around. This is the law of the observer. Find the scenic view and fling words into anageing files, phrase piled upon phrase, body hoisted above the set as a distended specimen, a metaperson, curious creature who comes out at night.

And it usually rolls slowly. Rain pit pattering on a tin roof, and the sloshing of feet in wet wellingtons. The trees shiver and bend under the patrolling clouds. Distance collected and distilled, awareness again an oyster pearl hardened from some arbitrary speck of dirt. Don’t you know that the precious stones are from pressure born?

Answers gush faster than the questions, a sea of information engulfing simple fishers. How we lose our hooks and tackle, in the spinning sea of modernity. Adjust, adapt, take flight with simple fisher wings, up into the network on ladders of smoke and binary things.

Alone again, return to ground level until, the gnawing splices of new devices tear a tread into the rubber of your soul. Here we go again, the part is searching for the whole. I hear that what is unstable is more able to change, but there is only so many times that paper will fold.

Be bold, be bold. Tear a strip of the haunches of existence, grip it with your most stubborn molars, eyes alive on the bloody prize. But then, the bitten animal will buckle and tumble, knees helplessly dropping, cells bursting and the thin thread exposed to the edge. “Retreat to slumber,” calls the ship’s captain. “Only in the confines of the mind will we solace find.” “Oh dear,” you hear yourself mumble, “the nature of these days are unclear.” And before them too that long span still hung, the same bodies with different cloth.

All in the head. Wring from your hands the spoil’s juices, return to the corner to hang another faded banner, greet the morning with mild humour, mild banter. Forget what you just said. All in the head.

The scale of information on the Internet is exploding. But can it be harnessed to deliver quality education, and can this make it to the concrete classroom? If one teacher can give 91 million lessons… then yes it Khan.

If it can be known, then it’s probably on Wikipedia. If it can be shown, it’s already on YouTube. With a million hits and a thousand comments buzzing like a swarm of bees and butterflies, one demonstration reaches the masses. But despite all this potential, is technology being used effectively to educate?

The printing press was invented by Johannes Gutenberg around 1440. As cultural inventions go, it signaled quite a revolution for the spread of ideas. Nowadays, as the cliche goes, we are living in the dawn of a new age of information. From every angle a constant stream of data is radiated through countless devices, flowing through the dense networks of cables and protocols we call the internet.

Information, of course is not all of equal value. Bias, ignorance, profanity, lies, and enough statistics to interpret a horse as a donkey can engulf browsing brains and leave them no more learned than before; perhaps even less so due to confirmation of false beliefs or confusion of others. How can the Internet be leveraged to actually promote learning and not just entertainment, indulgence, or fact checking? Is the effect of the net really that great for developing brains?

Recent researchers have postulated that the mind of today has changed its tack thanks to the nature of altered information delivery. Nicholas Carr, author of “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains” has argued that the new style of consuming data is physically altering how the brain functions. This controversial opinion is not widely accepted, but even the lesser charge that our habits of thinking are changing is fascinating. An ability to search and scan and quickly jump from totally different contexts (e.g. shopping for new shoes while reading movie reviews while writing an email) may be replacing the capacity for deep thought specific ideas. Given the limited resource of mental powers and memories that we have, we are becoming dependent on artificial online memory to store our information and personal history, and our thinking patterns are now analogous to search engines. In an article in the Guardian, University of East Anglia professor Sarah Churchwell noted that:

“In 10 years, I’ve seen students’ thinking habits change dramatically: if information is not immediately available via a Google search, students are often stymied” ((http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/aug/15/internet-brain-neuroscience-debate Accessed December 2011))

“Do you know X? No, but there’s no value in knowing X because I know how to look it up, and I fully expect to be enlightened about X whenever I choose.” It’s more efficient to remember where to find information than to remember the information itself. Yet knowledge and wisdom must be born from deep thinking and learning that has been chewed and digested, mulled and mooted over a long period of time. Making good decisions or wise choices is not something you can look up. And even if you do look something up, can it be trusted?

The results given by a search engine will generally be arranged in favour of the most popular and most linked-to webpages. A majority of the searchers will click on the first link. More will try the second or third. A tiny percentage will go to the second page of results, and after that, the rest of the pages are pretty much anonymous, regardless of how many million of them there are. So instead of having a wide range of differing opinions and interesting viewpoints, the bulk of learners will follow the same well-worn paths and by that process make them even deeper. If every student working on a class assignment looks up the very same piece of text and set of pictures, then there will hardly be a diverse set of resulting submissions. It’s like a library where for each topic, the same few books take up 90% of the shelves, and the other contenders gather dust well away from eye level.

Here though, it is important to take a step back and acknowledge the amazing accomplishments and wealth of detail available via portals like Wikipedia or Google. As of December 17th 2011, the English version of Wikipedia reckons itself to have 3,824,473 articles. From January 1st 2010 to the same day one year later, around the time of the website’s tenth birthday, the number of articles jumped by 1025 per DAY. ((How big is Wikipedia? Ask Wikipedia!: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia)) Every nook and cranny of the world of fascinating facts is being explored, explained, uploaded, and more than that, monitored, maintained, and updated. A living encyclopaedia that ties current news to existing information, run with no ads or charges, created by the public for the public. Wow!

It is easy to forget how young the giant online content providers are. The first YouTube video was uploaded by one of the founders, Jawed Karim, on Saturday, April 23 2005, at 8:27pm ((http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&v=jNQXAC9IVRw)). By their sixth birthday in May 2011, the official blog reported that they had gone “past the 3 billion views a day mark”, and that “more than 48 hours (two days worth) of video are uploaded to the site every minute” ((http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2011/05/thanks-youtube-community-for-two-big.html)). Google, YouTube, and Wikipedia have arrived not with a gradual whimper, but with a precocious bang!

There is an incredible amount of material online, but again, it is quality not quantity that matters. You can find more ways to skin a cat than there are cats to be skinned on YouTube. Real education demands explanation, understanding, and practice. How can information created by the public be structured enough and consistent enough to turn short videos into concrete learning? Another young website, similarly free but with content created by one person instead of through public contributions, takes the role of a teacher, not a provider and organizer of information:

http://www.khanacademy.org

Salman Kahn was born in New Orleans, has three degrees from MIT, an MBA from Harvard, and left his job as a hedge fund analyst after a chain of events that began with him giving his young cousin some help with her math homework. He left what was surely a pretty good job to sit in a room all day and create videos. Videos and videos and more videos, none of which contain his face, but all of which contain his even, enthusiastic voice and steady straightforward explanations of everything from one plus one to the nature of black holes and central banks. The videos are hosted on YouTube, but are also accessible in a more organized way on the Khan Academy’s website, a not-for-profit enterprise with funding from the likes of the Gates Foundation.

There are now over 2700 videos on khanacademy.org, and while this seems miniscule compared to YouTube or Wikipedia, it is a fundamentally different exercise. This is one teacher covering the foundations of education in a way that is digestible, testable, and encouraging. Rather than skipping and jumping from one dry authoritative-sounding article to the next, dizzy from finding in each references to a dozen others that are required reading for a thorough understanding, we have a single mind that starts at the start and leads a merry path through the core components of education. Math, science, and the humanities. Ninety-one million lessons delivered, and counting.

Unlike the relentless debate that characterizes the wealth of knowledge and insight hidden away in forums and blogs, this is a singular vision with remarkable breadth, clarity, and accessibility, all presented with the learner in mind. The video format combining reading with a human voice and active demonstration, backed up by exercises, is a great way to learn. The extremely simple drawings are humanizing and as familiar as a blackboard. On the ‘About’ page, Sal surmises his approach:

“I teach the way that I wish I was taught. The lectures are coming from me, an actual human being who is fascinated by the world around him.” ((http://www.khanacademy.org/about accessed December 2011))

Beyond the videos is a practice area where students can set about a large tree of practice exercises. Starting with basic number properties and algebra, and slowly building towards harder stuff like calculus and trigonometry, this growing set supports the videos and creates a game-like environment with points and bonuses and progress tracking.

Wikipedia offers a remarkable reference set. The Khan Academy offers new ways to educate. Salman Kahn, or Sal, as he is known by his many students, is an educator from the open source generation, and believes that students should learn at their own pace, mastering each basic building block at that pace until they are ready to move on. In Los Altos schools in California, schools are testing a new style of teaching using his videos. Children watch the videos for homework, and spend class time solving problems and answering questions. The classroom is ‘flipped’, and the essential ingredient of application that is normally left to the unseen desks of homes is now the main focus during school hours. Could this be the way of the future? Teachers can log in at any time to look at progress and quickly see any weaknesses, and spend classtime giving vital one-on-one attention to those that need it.

For Kahn, the current one-speed-fits-all approach is akin to learning how to ride a bike for two weeks than immediately switching to a unicycle. Some learners will have mastered the bike and are ready to move on while others who needed more time on two wheels will find one wheel impossible. Thus the student who struggles with basic algebra is not ready to move on to more advanced topics, and will probably give up and begin to resent math.

However, is the Khan academy another enemy of diversity when it comes to learning? Just as the success of the one-speed approach to education is limited to some learners, so too is the one-source search limited to particular viewpoints. The aforementioned nature of search engines and most-popular most-emailed hottest-topic most-commented lists can give a weight of agreed truth to the highest ranked sources. The danger is that Wikipedia or Mr. Khan or any other single source is regarded as the be all and end all, and whereas every Justin Bieber view might be at the expense of a less heralded but equally or (heaven forbid) more worthy artist, the dominance of Wikipedia and co. might be at the expense of similarly worthy claims for intellectual attention.

The argument against these reactionary responses might emphasise the intentions of the entrepreneurs behind these ventures and the approaches that they take. The goal of the Khan Academy is not to become an authority or Gradgrind-style fact force-feeder. Sal’s approach is that of a curious and fascinated explorer, always open to discussion; far from a dogma-enforcing intellectual know-it-all, despite being introduced as “The man who knows everything” in a Financial Times article ((Article by David Gelles, accessed December 2011 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/0668fc92-002e-11e1-8441-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1gn0lvO7x)).

At the NewSchools summit in Aspen in 2011, moderator Ted Mitchell introduced Sal Kahn as “the icon for destructive innovation in education”. Like the vinyl record was doomed by the tape, which was then replaced by the CD, now being upset by digital players, these innovations and technologies have to ‘destroy’ to improve. As education is generally a public state-run enterprise, then there are extra barriers that will oppose approaches causing major disruption. However with increasing class sizes, cheaper digital devices and growing demand from education stakeholders (parents, students, and society as a whole) the pressure is on.

A mentor-like figure with great delivery and knowledge that uses the power of the latest platforms and tools to provide a coherent and well-organized library of educational videos available to anyone who can get online? That is surely a seriously valuable resource. The nature of learning and the process of education is taking its time to catch up with the flood of networked technologies, but not everything is as accelerated as the lifespan of the latest gadget, and surely the next generation of classrooms will have no choice but to embrace new approaches.

As for me, I’m going back to the Kahn classroom as an oversize student to relearn some stuff I’ve spent a decade forgetting.