22.08.2025

That tune I plucked - it’s the tarantella tune I mentioned before…named after the tarantula. It’s the melody that came from Italy and was washed into south west Donegal with a crew of shipwrecked Italian sailors, one of whom was taken in and stayed at the the Buchanan house in Doonalt. It’s often the first melody that comes to mind when I pick up the fiddle. I play it as a kind of call, un appel a French violinist friend of mine calls this; where you play fragments, meandering around; asking the surroundings to help you remember a tune. You noodle around until something arrives.

I heard it said before that there were three different tiers of fiddlers around south west Donegal in the old days; top-tier, renowned musicians who travelled from place-to-place sharing tunes, the middle tier who’d play for big nights - dances and so on and another tier of fiddlers who would play for the amusement of their friends and family. They might have only a few tunes and they’d hand the instrument to the next person who might also have just the one tune, or just a few tunes. I like that idea of there not being perfection or finesse towards performance, rather a collective meditation on the melodies as they arise.

This video at the ruins of a kelp house on Rathlin Island was not a performance but a practice, and as such tunes float around and are sometimes lost, arriving back later unexpectedly. Tension mounts and dissipates according to fleeting thoughts or images on the minds eye, a form of catharsis or a way to make sense of the world. Embarrassing to miss notes, squeak, whistle and blunder. Deanfaidh mé spáin nó millfidh mé adharc - either way something will come out of it, I’ll make a spoon or ruin a horn is what they used to say. Because the horns of farm animals would be gathered once a year to make kitchen utensils and after you started carving, there’d be only one of two outcomes.

This was myself and Liliane’s second last day of the six week tour and we were pensive, looking back. I was thinking, whilst playing the fiddle about how it is, that after a long journey you can get bogged down, start idling, go into the doldrums. A motionless place with the same thoughts each morning. Not leaving the house unless for work. Binge watching a sensationalised history of Norse kings or a drama about a women’s prison until they merge with each other -  and your dreams, in the early hours of the morning. Setting alarms for 8am, 8.30am, 8.45am, 9am and snoozing them all.

Over the years I’ve spent most of my sleeping life in water or in the mountains or both. Travelling downstream, through ravines on foot and along rivers in a boat, wondering if it’s cut out for the open sea. Years ago, I wanted to make a huge painting of a woman diving into the sea, though in my mind, the shape of the figure was abstract and became part of a circular gesture of thickly applied paint. Splashes of water and disturbed sand, a vivid toothy smile and her eyes wide open despite the rush of water. I tried to push a thick globule of blue around the figure allowing some mossy greens and yellows to travel with it. It was more physical than I anticipated to make a big painting like that. Creating strands of detail in the gestured rush of the water, then flicking the brush around, incising the painted surface to bring forth the dried-out layers of red and yellow beneath. In his work I was completely absorbed and at ease. No doubt in my mind the world was all mixed up and not me. I set up a studio area by the window that some of the fumes from the oil paint could escape. It was not an effective method and I frequently awoke in the night with a throbbing headache. I barely felt the days going like that. Though, in what might be seen as contradictory, I imagined that this state was the closest thing to what might be described as happiness. The failed paintings are long since gone to the dump.

But the making of paintings for no reason, or the intention to play a melody as you remember it; to the best of your ability, to maintain its integrity as much as possible, play it as it was taught; such endeavours sharpen the wit. They create a heightened sense of awareness. This, I feel; leads to depths of appreciation and enjoyment in collaborating with artists, musicians, and hones your faculties when encountering new works of art by others.

Part 1

Part 2