I'm writing to let you know about three weeks of live concerts that I give in Germany and The Netherlands this coming January/February 2011. I see these dates as an incredibly exciting opportunity for me to continue in developing the one man shows I've been performing throughout 2010 in support of my recently released second solo album The Mad Straight Road. As well as playing a few songs from both of my solo albums (Luxury Problems being the first) I am using this tour to showcase and refine a host of new material most of which is previously unheard. These new songs are what will make up my next solo album which I hope to start recording in 2011. The live shows I have given over 2010 have helped me to grow a great deal in artistry and confidence. I have had such a positive response from so many people that it has made these recent performances a truly inspiring and profound experience for me. I am really looking forward to returning to Germany and The Netherlands to play there after successful tours in these countries with Strangelove both as a main act and also as a support band to Suede in the nineties. I would like to encourage anyone who can get to these solo concerts to come along. I believe I have more to impart to an audience now than at any other point in my life so far and I truly believe that these performances will be most special. If you do come along please don't hesitate to come up and say hello to me after the show. I look forward very much to meeting you all.
It has been some time now since I've made an update so here goes.
My friend Vigyan is a connoisseur of live music. He's a man who seems to spend almost his entire life in concert halls. So when he recently told me with great enthusiasm about a group called the Boyan Ensemble who were to stage an afternoon concert last week at Clifton Cathedral in Bristol I felt confident it would be a special event. The Boyan Ensemble are a male voice choir from the Ukraine. They sing Sacred Music from their heritage of the Orthodox Church. There are between twenty or thirty of them in number all of differing ages. I've listened to a lot of Sacred Music over the past twenty or so years and I've always loved the Music from Eastern Europe. It was therefore with a large degree of expectation that I took my place amongst the smallish gathering of senior citizens huddled together in the bright and spacious cathedral.
The winter's sun was sinking outside as the performance began with the mournful sound of a tubular bell repeatedly tolled. The ensemble entered carrying electric candles and all dressed in black robes that swished down to their feet. The choir humming a collection of very low notes that transmitted an uneasy harmony as they strolled forward to the alter of the church. The ensemble then turned to face the audience leaving one singer at the back of the cathedral. The dark atmosphere was intensified by this single male voice, also in a low register, that now rose above the ominous humming with an exquisite melody of deep longing. The sound seemed to reach into the innermost past and then up into some evacuated heaven. A melancholy yearning for some dormant Father God to awaken from his slumber and release us all from our suffering.
This sense of awe and mystery continued to surround and infiltrate the proceedings as different members of the ensemble came forward to take the limelight. One after the other of an incredible range of soloists who inhabited the choir emerged. The faces of the rest of the ensemble deep in a fretful meditation backing up whomsoever was leading any particular chant. Most notably the countertenor Mitryaynev whose incredibly high almost soprano like singing was particularly haunting. A most unusual sound that was at once beautiful and terrifying as are the manifestations of so many great works of art. He was an unusual looking bearded man, short in stature and of about thirty years of age with a kind of teddy boy haircut. His eyes black coals that burned with the relaxed fervor of a man who has found exactly his calling in life and is at that moment carrying out his destiny. I found big fat tears coming freely and easily to me. Perhaps to do with my own particular preoccupations with a sad and beautiful time but also I think because of the relief of hearing something of such undoubted authenticity and deep longing. Utterly free of the hedonism and self aggrandisement that so often passes as entertainment today and to which I find myself subscribing at times as a distraction from the deeper parts of myself I feel troubled to continue in confronting. To be brought back to myself and to witness and sense the humility of these singers as they embodied the Sacred Music of their own particular Orthodox tradition after what must have been hours and hours of practice was in itself a truly humbling and uplifting experience.
As I sat in the half empty (or is it half full ) cathedral at the interval I was able to reflect upon the Eastern Orthodox churches and the experiences I've had of them. I traveled a fair amount through Greece and Eastern Europe doing concerts over the years and have always been fascinated to visit Orthodox churches. From a very young man until today I have particularly appreciated the icon paintings that decorate much of the interiors of these places. These icons have always spoken to me. They ask difficult questions as they stare unwaveringly out of their mild eyes. They challenge me and show me the shallowness of so much of my thinking. I am fascinated with what it is they so clearly understand that seems just out of my reach and yet closer to me than my own shadow. I always feel, when I tear myself away from those faces, that I've missed the point somehow yet they keep on looking at me and no doubt will continue to do so.
I've also at times had the opportunity to witness Orthodox services carried out in echoing and unfamiliar tongues and most often entirely sung in stupefying monotone by impressive priests with huge black beards and richly elaborate costumes. These priests negotiate their way through extravagant and complicated rituals that are carried out in some places behind a painted screen and at others with their backs facing the congregation to whom they display a disinterest that is verging on the contemptuous. Like all the old religions I have witnessed over the years they are on the way out. It always seems to be just me and a few old ladies at any of the services I've attended. I remember being struck by the intensity of these priests as they surefoot their way through the mass blissfully, it seems, unmindful of the extremely diminished number of worshipers. As the ship goes down these guys are just carrying on doing their thing and making no attempt to try and win back congregations with people pleasing events or the suchlike. It's hard to imagine the Boyan Ensemble agreeing to perform The Songs Of U2 in order to boost numbers at their local church. I personally am not interested in such events myself and far prefer some eerie esoteric ritual in a crumbling candlelit church in Eastern Europe any day. For that I feel much gratitude to the stubborness of such people and their unflinching beliefs in their own tradition and have often felt like standing up mid service to applaud them and cry out a scream of solidarity, which I don't really have with them of course, although I've never had the bottle.
I understand that these religions with their dogma and bloody track records will go but to me there is some deep mystery within them that I feel is truly sacred and worth holding to, if only as a contemplation. Brought up as a Roman Catholic much of my life has been a movement away from religion that sways back and forth but I have found this. As I move away from the dogma and convention of religion I move closer to it's mystery. The recognition that this mystery is what has truly sustained me through what I suppose has been a troubled life, is why I feel protective as well as inspired when I experience it in any form whatsoever. And let's face it whale calls and synthesizers doesn't quite do it man. This mystery however is what I was able to encounter in the singing of The Boyan Ensemble and I hope that such groups will continue with their traditions carrying the beauty and wisdom of their ancestors alive and into the hearts of those of us with broken hearts who sense an absence that we long to redeem.
I am writing this sitting next to a huge oak tree in the park at the end of my road. It's an Indian summer here in England this year and the sun is beating down on my face and hands. I can hear a crow above me in a spruce calling and calling and now suddenly it has stopped. There are leaves beginning to fall from the trees and they catch the sunlight as they drift towards the park. There are small children and mothers negotiating play with each other on the swings and roundabouts and I'm at the top of a slope of grass looking down over them.Two lovers entwined pass me by but I don't feel miserable at all.
I've been to this park a few times now and it's good to get out of my room and feel the breeze. I can take my shoes off and it's a kind of lazy place here where you can drift into reality. I spent a lot of time in parks when I was drinking but it always seemed to be slightly raining then and I can't really remember anyone else being there. Anyway if they saw me they were off.
This morning and over the last few days I've been practicing for the concert at The Cube Cinema on the 17th. I'm really looking forward to it now. The nerves start going when you actually start playing the songs. For this concert as well as performing songs I'm also going to be telling some stories from the archive pages of this site as well as some I haven't written about. The gig is a celebration of the launch of this website. I'm also going to play some new songs no one has ever heard before. My friend Juan has made a short Super 8 Film that will be projected on to the cinema screen.
Those sycamore seeds that fall down like helicopters are descending across the park now and the children are coming out of Cotham School. The whole atmosphere of the place has changed and it's alive with shouts, screams and laughter and groups of sullen boys under the trees smoking dope. There are red and white roses still blooming in the flowerbeds near where I am lying and a hippy girl walking across the grass in a long purple dress carrying a beehive. She disappears into the shadows and I can hear the squeaking brakes of the train as it pulls into Redland Station. I can see a little baby trying to put the whole world into it's mouth.
I've pretty much decided on the songs I'm going to play at the gig now. It's always a little sad for me these days as there are so many songs I want to play and some of them always have to be left out because of the time. I've been thinking about that and also which stories to tell and trying to link them in somehow with the songs but I don't want to plan things too much. I've learned that you can trust the spirit of a gig and anyway I've never been a person who felt that comfortable with too many plans for myself or anyone else for that matter. The gig is going to be great.
There are a group of schoolgirls aged about 11 or 12 who have just come and sat down near to me and they are noisily talking nineteen to the dozen. I just heard one of them with blond pigtails say 'I love that feeling when you scratch stuff off your skin and you can feel it underneath your nails' and then she says 'Do you want a mint humbug?' They are all swearing but it doesn't sound right yet. They haven't quite learned how to do it properly.
Now one of the little girls,the one with the blond pigtails, just shouted over to me and said ' You look like you're concentrating really hard on something, are you an artist?' I look up from my writing book and say 'Yes' 'OOOOOHHHHHH' they all say 'I'm amazing' says the one with the pigtails 'I said you were an artist' 'Can you draw us' says one of her five friends and strikes a pose 'Well I'm not drawing I'm writing at the moment' I say ' 'Oh' she says Then the one with the pigtails says 'You look like a very arty sort of person' Thankyou' I say.
I walk back to my house and then I have to go shopping. I see someone who was once,and still is in some ways, what people call a big name. A widely published author and a person who shook up the whole field he was involved with as a young man. He's wealthy now, we all know that, but he needles along the street with a bright red face and he's swigging out of a can of Tennants super. He catches me in the corner of his eye and I can see his irritation. He stands swaying by a bus stop trying to light a cigarette and I have to make myself look away as I realise I'm fascinated by him but it doesn't feel right to stare and I don't want him to become too aware of me. I'm in a cafe eating a sandwich and 'There's a ghost in my house' by R.Dean Taylor is playing on the radio. As I walk home the sun is shining in my face and I'm singing a new song in my heart. See you at The Cube if you're able to come.
My mother was born on a small farm up in the hills of Mid-Wales. Over recent years my family have returned here each summer to spend time together. We stay in the Gregynog garden cottages. As well as my mother, my father and myself there are my three sisters and my brother with their partners and children. All in all there are twenty-two of us. It is a laughing, crying, chaotic and intense experience which is always worth it especially because of my nephews and nieces who are all the apples of my eye. They range in age from little Cody aged two up to James aged fifteen and in between are Jess, Rosa, Martha, Joe, Patrick, Caitlin, Luke, Tomas and Brigit. The Gregynog estate is now owned by the University of Wales and from the garden cottages you can look across the Werne valley to the hills where my mother was born on a smallholding called Porthmai. You can see the ash tree beneath which she spent most of her time playing as a child and arranging her dollies in lines. You can hear the incessant calling of the buzzards all through the day in the valley and you can watch red Kites as they swoop in circles over and over high above the hills. There are cattle and sheep and horses that graze along the deep green of the Werne bottom. A short walk away along a dark tree-lined path is an opening onto the gardens of Gregynog Hall, a huge Manor House built by the once owners of the estate. At night the sky is pitch black and filled with stars and the air is alive with the calls of owls. There are rabbits and weasels and mice. There is a hornets' nest and a wasps' nest in the eaves of the cottage and on the forest path behind the old wash house I have from time to time come across snakes.
The Gregynog estate was bequeathed to the University of Wales by the Davies sisters. These two eccentric sisters Gwendoline and Margaret were the last people to have lived as sole residents at Gregynog Hall. They were spinsters who had been gifted a huge fortune by their father who was the Welsh entrepreneur Lord David Davies. He had made his money from the mines and building railways across Wales. Both his daughters however had a lively interest in art and music and they spent their lives availing themselves of his wealth by collecting major works of art, many of which were gifted to the Cardiff Museum at the time of the last sister's death. However there are a number of great works still at the house. A Rodin bust, a Cezanne, a Monet and a Van Gogh. When the sisters were alive the house was full of music and art. George Bernard Shaw and Gustav Holst were among the regular visitors who attended the art and music parties. My grandfather was the gardener to the sisters as well as running the small farm Porthmai which he rented from them. He killed rabbits and pigeons to feed to their guests when they had the parties. He also built them the huge music rooms of wood and stone at the side of house, completely with his own hands, as his father had been a carpenter and a stone mason. This is where the guests attended their musical evenings. My great Aunt Fanny was the cook at the house and then in her later years she became a paid companion to the two sisters and lived in a little flat in the courtyard at the back of the house.
Gregynog Hall
Each year my mother and myself make a pilgrimage to the graves of her family to bring flowers. My grandparents are buried in a small graveyard on the side of a hill in the village of Berriew. We visit the various graves of my mum's brothers and sisters who are no longer here. My mum's was a large family. I have a particular feeling of connection to my mum's sister Joyce who died of tuberculosis in 1947 when she was only twenty three. My mother, who was only eight at the time, says she well remembers Joyce dying at home being nursed by my grandmother. Joyce is buried under the oak trees in the far corner of the churchyard in the village of Tregynon and it is a place that is very special to my heart.
My great grandparents on my grandfather's side are buried in a churchyard in the small village of Manafon. This is the church where R.S Thomas the great Welsh poet was rector from 1942 - 1954. From here he wrote and released his first three volumes of poetry. I already had a love of his poems before I realised this connection with my family. Many of his early poems describe his relationships with the Welsh hill farmers to whom he feels helpless in bringing The Word and who he feels are a disappearing world away from him. It wasn't till my mum took me to these graves and I heard her stories that I realised these poems I knew so well were describing characters from my family tree (from his perspective I might add) but nevertheless his poems feel even more of a gift to me now. The yearly visiting of the graves is one of the most precious times of the holiday for me. A rare chance to spend time with my mother and a chance to stand on the ground where my ancestors bones are lying.
Me and my mum at the graves
Another source of stories about my mother's side of the family comes from one of her brothers called Alun. He came up one day to the cottages to visit us. He is a university lecturer at Swansea and has done extensive research into our family in all directions. He is an extremely passionate man full of Welsh fire and I love him. His own daughter, my cousin Rian, who was an amazing person, worked as a news presenter on BBC Wales and had already written articles for the Guardian when she was tragically killed in a car crash aged only eighteen. There is a bench in Gregynog estate gardens dedicated to Rian and I go there to feel close to her. There is a feeling of great peace and sadness mixed together here under the sycamore trees where her bench waits. On a happier note I find it truly fantastic to see the enthusiasm with which uncle Alun relays his tales about the ancestors. On my grandmother's side the name was Llwyarch. Uncle Alun told me that a few generations back there was a Llwyarch the son of a farmer. He fell in love with the butcher's wife in the village and they began a tempestuous secret affair. In the end however when the fire died down and unable to offer her any security as the farmers and their children were so poor the butcher's wife became tired of the young Llwyarch. She spurned him and told him to never come and meet her again or try to contact her. He brooded for a time and then one night stole down the hills and into the village. He broke into the butchers shop and taking a meat cleaver climbed the stairs and killed both the butcher and his wife as they lay in their bed. Then he dragged them downstairs and chopped them up in the butcher's shop. It's good to know where you come from I always say.
Towards the end of our holiday we go across to Aberystwyth. My sisters Catherine Jacqueline and Bridget, my brother Edward and all the children. Myself and Jacqueline jumped into the cold, rough sea as we do ritually every year. Just the two of us for some reason. This year I swam out quite a distance and let the huge waves throw me up and down. I love it. However when I came to try and swim ashore I found that the tide which was going out was dragging me out to sea. I've never experienced this before and it was happening to Jacqueline as well although she wasn't as far out as me. I was swimming and swimming and not getting anywhere. A feeling of desperation started to come up into me as I realised something much much more powerful than me had other ideas than I did. I could feel my arms and legs tiring and the huge waves were crashing over me. I closed my eyes and dug deep trying not to swallow the salt water. I found some extra strength from somewhere although the primeval fear was all over my body from head to toe. I heard Jacqueline struggling too and calling out and I started to make some headway eventually after what seemed a lifetime reaching a place where I could stand. Then I was thrown about and knocked off my feet over and over again by the waves till I reached the shore exhausted. Jacqueline had made it too. Wow that was frightening. I thought later on that all my musings about the dead over the years have made me think of death as more of a friend these days but when the sea tried to take me away everything that is inside me wanted to live and wanted to live with a powerful and desperate vitality.
As I get older and preoccupations with myself start to thankfully wane somewhat I have found the voices of my ancestors and other unrelated ghosts coming through in my songs. I feel that in a way they have chosen me in order to make their voices heard and this expression is part of their coming to rest. Now that there's more space and little less noise inside me they are able to finally be heard and come through. It is very exciting to be entering this new stage of my creativity which has been going on over the last few years and which will make up the songs on my next album. I am so looking forward to sharing them. My father's side of the family is Irish and through him I experienced an incredible connection with our bloodline quite recently as well. That however is another story. I will leave you now with this video of the great poet R.S Thomas.
Welcome everybody to the Patrick Duff Website. On this Home Page you will find pieces of writing and videos that will be regularly updated. A place for thoughts and ideas. The News Page will be the place for you to find out about up and coming performances. The Shop is where you can purchase my new album The Mad Straight Road. You can buy the album as a C.D that I can send to you through the post or alternatively as MP3 downloads. To listen to extracts of the songs go to the MP3 page which you can access through the shop.
The Mad Straight Road C.D of twelve songs comes in a D.V.D style case with six photographs, all of the lyrics and the credits. I will also sign the album for anyone who wants me to. You can leave your details at the checkout. I am happy to welcome you to this site and I encourage you also to visit the Archive Page. Here I have written a series of memories and reflections around my recordings with Strangelove and the other projects I have been involved in during my solo career up to the present day. Accompanying these writings I have included some photographs that come from the times and places that the pieces are describing. I would also like to encourage everyone to leave any feedback about anything they experience here on my Facebook, Myspace and Twitter pages.
Today I am leaving you a short video of the end sequence of a film called Stalker made by the Russian Film director Andrei Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky is one of my favorite film directors and I have been fascinated with his work for many years now after firstly watching his final film The Sacrifice. The atmosphere of this film completely captured my imagination as a young man and inspired me to seek out all of his other works. His film Andrei Rublev about the journey of an artist is one of the most fantastic films I have ever seen. About ten years ago I read Tarkovsky's diaries from 1970 until his death in 1986 published in a book called Time Within Time. This book also had a powerful effect on me. I was truly inspired to read of Tarkovsky's struggle to make and release his films and his battle with the Soviet regime and the total commitment he showed to his life as an artist and to his work. When I first saw this scene you can watch here, that appears at the end of Stalker, I was deeply moved by it. I hope you too will enjoy it and if you don't already know his work it will inspire you to explore his films. I find that his work has stayed with me and deepens as the years go by. I am very grateful to Tarkovsky and his sensitivity as a film maker and for the gifts he has given me.
To me our society is like a well lit circle and most people you meet in it encourage you to stay within that circle and live out your life in a kind of safety within the parameters of what is already understood. Stay in here and do this and everything will be alright. That's basically what they told me at school. Occasionally there will be somebody who lights a candle and walks out into the darkness that is outside of that circle and they leave a trail of light behind them. There are no guarantees when you walk that road and it doesn't always mean that everything will be alright. To me those people send messages back to us about what they have found. A song or a poem or a film or a piece of music that you can feel in your guts. It is these people who have always inspired me and to whom I aspire. For these artists have been the ones who have fed my soul. To me it is these people who by following their deepest calling regardless of others and by walking out into the dark eventually increase the circle of light that society lives within by a little, and add to our knowledge of ourselves by the works they leave behind. As far as I am concerned Andrei Tarkovsky is one of these people.
