SOUL SURMISE

SCRATCHING MY SOUL (for the parents of Cookstown)

Heartbroken for the parents of those teenagers who lost their lives in the tragedy at the Greenvale Hotel, Cookstown on St. Patrick's Day... 

 

Angel, you got your wings too soon

Heaven didn't lend you long enough

And you showed me that in this old world

There's nothing like a parent's love

And everybody's conversing words

That I'm thinking only God can say

While I just sit here scratching my soul

And long to hold you 'til your body decays.

 

I guess you can't look both ways

And avoid what this life throws at you

But while we shake our fists at God

Maybe God is angry too

Maybe God is weeping too.

 

Angel, you got your wings too soon

There was so much love still to do

When I think of all my reasons for living

Most of them stopped breathing with you

They say that you dance on higher ground

My heart is stretched trying to reach those ways

While I just sit here scratching my soul

Longing to hold you 'til your body decays.

 

I guess you can't look both ways

And avoid what this life throws at you

But while we shake our fists at God

Maybe God is angry too

Maybe God is weeping too.

 

 

 

STIFF LITTLE FINGERS AND U2 LIVE IN THE MCMORDIE HALL 1981 - BBC FOUR

What a treat! I suddenly became aware that BBC Four were doing a St Patrick’s Weekend Irish music evening. As I flicked through I could hardly believe my eyes. Stiff Little Fingers and U2 in The McMordie Hall, Queen’s University, Belfast in 1981! I was sure that this tape was lost. I am sure I had asked at some stage and been told so. I remember watching this at the time. I was a big Stiff Little Fingers fan. I had heard of U2 but I wasn’t paying much attention.

The McMordie Hall was a legendary venue in the Queen’s University Belfast’s Students Union. It is a dark dingy cellar like basement hall. You might even call it Belfast’s Cavern! Over the decades band like The Clash, Snow Patrol, Mumford & Sons and Ed Sheeran played their early gigs as they set out on successful careers. 

In 1986 the The McMordie Hall controversially changed its name to The Mandela Hall as Queen’s students joined so many across the world in solidarity with Nelson Mandela. On July 28th 2018 the curtain came down on The Mandela Hall. After 50 years it held its final gig because it is collateral damage in a new Students Union development. Quality local acts, David C Clements, Ryan Vail and And So I Watch You From Afar assured a fine send off!

My own highlights include Belfast’s own Energy Orchard when they looked to be the next big thing, more recently Jake Bugg and best of all Radiohead in a secret warm up concert for their OK Computer Tour. The fascinating thing about that Radiohead gig was that they banned the press, so when the BBC were doing a documentary on the evening almost 20 years later they discovered that the only review of the night in the entire world was the one I wrote the next day, for this very blog!! 

Watching these 1981 McMordie Hall concerts, almost forty years later, is fascinating. U2 were recorded one night and Stiff Little Fingers the next, the two shows then spliced together, song about. 

I found myself wondering how Stiff Little Fingers didn’t become as crucial as The Clash. The power punk pop of Alternative Ulster and Suspect Device are blisteringly brilliant. Belfast’s finest were a division above the upstart gatecrashers from Dublin at this stage of development but no more promotions were achieved. Where did Jake Burns muse go. Did it remain in Belfast when they relocated to London? 

U2, of course, didn’t relocate. They stayed in the city of their youth, if not in the same neighbourhoods. Having said that U2 were only setting out on the search of their muse. Yet, I was struck by the fact that the producer of this television show chose two songs, Electric Co and Out Of Control, that the band would be still delivering live, forty years later. Not that these performances would have convinced anyone of the longevity ahead!

However, there were a few fragments in this show that gave glimpses of the future. Bono’s charismatic front man magnetism is already very much in evidence. His energy and the intensity of his engagement with the crowd. He’s a star, in his own mind, long before he actually becomes one! Though at times his voice is ragged, there are subtleties, particularly during 11 O’Clock Tick Tock, that suggest the singer he would become.

Edge on the other hand is fully formed. Oh he would build on the technique and the number of sounds on his guitar palette but here he is swaying side to side, walking back and forwards as if the guitar is an extension of his body. He is a master of sonic subtleties already. It’s natural, it’s cool, and already utterly unique and rock ringingly beautiful. With Adam and Larry pounding out a thumping beat there was surely potential but when this was aired only potential.

Seeing this again was indeed a St. Patrick’s weekend treat. These are the songs of innocence that we can only watch through the lens of experience… and wonder… 

HOW ST. PATRICK'S DAY COULD TRANSFORM THE WORLD

If you’re a mid Antrim man like Liam Neeson, Brendan Rogers and me then Slemish looms large in your landscape. As long as I can remember there being mountain, a few miles out the road, I remember that it was volcanic, a little disconcerting to a child, and that St. Patrick had lived there. And every St. Patrick's Day I see Slemish in my imagination, though I can no longer actually see it from South Belfast.

So again, on March 17th, I am thinking of a young Patrick kidnapped into slavery, sitting on that mountain. What was he thinking? How did he like the Irish? What about home?

The story goes that while tending sheep on Slemish, Patrick reflected on his relationship with God and it changed everything. Patrick wrote about God guiding him to a port where he would find a boat home. Escape. The ordeal done. The Irish put behind him.

But… that discovering God for Patrick meant that he would feel called back to those who kidnapped and enslaved him so that he could tell them the Good News of the Christian Gospel and convert them to the ways of Jesus. As God forgave him, Patrick becomes forgiving and goes back to forgive and love his enemies. 

Some fourteen centuries later Belfast would be the port that would ban the slave ships, influenced by that Gospel that one slave came back to bring. Patrick’s time on Slemish didn’t only change everything for him but for the entire island as today’s celebrations across the world attest to.

It is an amazing story of redemption and forgiveness. So, today, whatever the dark time we are caught up in, there is hope of transformation. It might just be that this very place of misfortune or injustice is our Slemish, the place where our destiny finds its beginning to change us and maybe a nation… like Jacob wrestling with God or the children of Israel in slavery in Egypt, Paul blinded on the way to Damascus or Peter hearing that cock crow as he denies Jesus a third time. 

Today, almost the entire world will be impacted by the day we remember Patrick. Rivers will be coloured green, millions will down green beer, wearing leprechaun hats and sprigs of Shamrock as we celebrate something of the wonder of being Irish. A closer look though and we might find the key to literally transforming the world - LIBERATION! FORGIVENESS! RECONCILIATION! LOVE OF THE OTHER! On a week like we humans have endured that would be a mighty fine St. Patrick's Day!

Christ be with you, Christ within you, Christ behind you, Christ before you. Have a blessed day.

STOCKI'S ST PATRICK'S DAY PLAYLIST 2019

MY LAGAN LOVE - ULIAD & DUKE SPECIAL

from A Note Let Go

 

I’M STILL ALIVE (Live In Fitzroy) - DAVID C CLEMENTS

from The Sound Of The Forest Choir

 

NORTHERN STARS - BEN GLOVER

From Shorebound

 

NEW DAY - GARETH DUNLOP

from No. 79

 

BOWIE ON THE RADIO - RYAN MCMULLAN

from the single

 

EVERYBODY LOVES YOU - SOAK

from Grim Town

 

THE ICE-CREAM MAN (featuring Michael Longley) - DUKE SPECIAL

from Hallow

 

HEARTBREAK WAS HEARTBREAK - URSULA BURNS

from The Dangerous Harpist

 

SAD SONGS TONIGHT - BRIAN HOUSTON

from Carolina

 

BELFAST (featuring Rita Maguire) - JOBY FOX

from the single

 

A WEE BIT OF SOMETHING - ANDREW PATTERSON

from Out Of Babylon EP

 

BELFAST TOWN - KAZ HAWKINS

from Feelin’ Good

 

ONE FOR THE BLACK BOX - ANTHONY TONER

from Our Lady of Wind and Rain

 

SHANDY BASS - ROMANTICA

from Shadowlands

 

RAMBLING IRISHMAN - KEVIN DOHERTY

from Seeing Things

 

THE LAST TRAIN TO LIMERICK (featuring Louise Walsh) - JULES MAXWELL

from Songs From A Cultural Backwater

 

I THINK OF HOME - GARY LIGHTBODY

from Live At Bangor Abbey

 

TWO DAYS IN SAVANNAH - CIARAN LAVERY

from Sweet Decay

 

A NEW ARMAGEDDON - MALOJIAN

from Let Your Weirdness To Carry You Home

 

SONGS I KNEW SO WELL - KEN HADDOCK

from One Night In Willowfield

 

GYPSIES IN THE WOOD - MCPEAKE

from Gypsies In The Wood EP

 

AN AMERICAN IN BELFAST - OVER THE RHINE

from Love and Revelation 

ON THE TRAIL OF THE CELTIC CROSS

From September 1991 to August 1994 I had the privilege of living in Dublin. My job as Youth Development Officer took me out across Ireland to Churches from Cork to Donegal.

This poem began in South Africa. I had gone to visit Janice who worked in Pietermartizburg for most of 1993. I am not sure exactly what I was reading that led to the opening line but I know the Book of Kells line was from something that Doug Gay said to me at either Arklight or Greenbelt that year.

"Through villages and towns" has to be a straight steal from Deacon Blue's Dignity though I only realised it now.

The poem is about me going back to work. It is about me driving across Ireland, seeing all those Celtic crosses. They had become a serious theological statement in my journey of faith at that time. God's redemption in the centre of his creation.

It is also a bit of a love song for Ireland. 

 

Reading books in far away beaches

Of home and all it’s sadness

Stories of our peculiar contribution

To this world’s racist madness

Where it seems we are pushed and pulled

In thoughts of those who went before

We believe the fairytales and myths

Without rational reason anymore

And tomorrow I’m heading home again

To the midst of bigoted oppression

To try and be something better

In spite of my own confession

I’ll go on the trail of the Celtic cross

Through villages and towns

Balancing creation and redemption

’Til the Kingdom comes around.

 

Back home to lush and emerald fields

Blessing of our soft wet weather

Where mountains green and bluest water

Are so beautifully sown together

There are songs and rhymes of love and wisdom

And poets wrestling with the truth

Book of Kells showing how far we’ve fallen

From the saintly art of our youth

There are shrines and statues and painted walls

Telling our history in religious signs

Some that I will never understand

And others that I claim to be mine

I’ll go on the trail of the Celtic cross

Through villages and towns

Balancing creation and redemption

’Til the Kingdom comes around.