What Has Calligraphy Got To do With Music?

I’ve always had a love of music. Perhaps it was one of the benefits of being brought up by a young mum and her siblings. Perhaps it’s because I was born a child of the 60’s, flower power, The Beatles, The Bachelors, Mick J, The Twist….. heavier, rock and rolling, dancing, more optimistic music than people had been used to. At 2 ½ I would go next door to Bobby and (now what was her name) anyway, Mr and Mrs Wilsons and be fully capable of stacking records and dancing to a variety of music, even singing ‘I Wanna Be Bobby’s Girl’ to Bobby Wilson, whilst doing the twist.

Dance , music and rhythm played an important part in my life, in fact right throughout my life. From Gymnastics and Ballet, to discos and musical instrument playing. I love my Djembe’s, more importantly I love playing with others. Something really special happens when you drum in a circle. Something that cannot be described even by those who experience it. The Druids would probably call it Awen. It’s a connection to something far above and outside of ourselves. Something perhaps more of the spiritual realm. Many different cultures, religions and belief systems use sound and in particular drums, in their practices.
The beat of the drum, the beat of your heart, the beat of Mother Earth…all are connected. They say if you have a heartbeat, you can drum.
Ironically, that beat and rhythm is also evident in Calligraphy. Each line of text has it’s own feeling, heartbeat and rhythm. It’s hard to explain this to a non calligrapher. During my many years of training, the similarities between Calligraphy and music was mentioned. It’s no surprise then, that the time I feel more connected to my work is when I work with song lyrics.

I still remember the first time the ‘Awen’ happened for me. I was asked to put words into an exhibition in Durham Cathedral. At the time I had discovered Enya and the song ‘How Can I Keep From Singing’ conjured up pictures, images and colours in my head. This experience was new to me and at the time I was still a relative beginner in calligraphy. The words inspired me, the melody hauntingly beautiful. I still remember the piece. A variety of blues and gold leaf. And the whole thing was done in a circle, cut into quarters by the gold leaf. The piece sold the first day it went on exhibition…. In fact I was the only one who sold anything in that exhibition. I had priced it not to sell. Many calligraphers will tell you that a newly created piece is like a baby and we get VERY attached to some things. The piece becomes like a new born child and needs to be looked at, admired, smiled at and somehow these pieces become very close to your heart. There is a gestation and incubation period which needs to be got over, before we can loose our attachment and let it go. I know all this sounds very strange, but it’s true. The connection to the spirit that went into the creating of the piece is very strong. Sometimes we feel like we had no real consciousness in creating the piece, almost as if guided by something outside ourselves.
After that I went on to create more music pieces. Some were done for commissions, others were done for myself, but always that ‘spirit/Awen/outside myself thing happened. I wonder if it’s because it’s a large piece and you do end up going into a sort of meditative trance on large pieces. It’s happened also when I wrote The Charge Of The Goddess out as a gift. I did really well on this one, I gave it away straight away…despite my inner child shouting NO NO, GIVE IT BACK, ME WANTS IT!

I love the band Runrig and have done many pieces of work with their lyrics. Both for them and fans. Unfortunately most of these were done to commission so you are never given free reign that you would otherwise have.

I was honoured to do a piece called The Fox and commissioned for Kelly Groucutt from ELO. I received a tape of a song that he wrote and performed, but was never released on the open market. The song was called The Fox. I have a photo of him with the piece but have only a black scan of the piece itself. I would have loved to have this done as a colour print, but as most of these pieces are huge, the financial costs would be unrealistic. Kelly sadly died on 19th February this year.

Kelly Groucutt always enjoyed touring and was just as happy playing with a local, little known band called Session 60 as he was doing a one-man performance in a pub. Most of all, he loved playing with Orchestra. I was fortunate to go and see him in the band play a return convert in 2006.

The last two pieces are The Fox Piece, all others are runrig. Appologies for poor quality of the photos, but they are taken from scans of 'real' photos. Thank god those days are over!