If you think you have a Friday Fix ‘up your sleeve’, then it’s time to set it free and send it to us!
Seriously, we’re always looking for contributors, new and old – and it would be nice to have a couple appear in the inbox over the next few weeks. Just drop Gill an email with your thoughts on a song (that isn’t religious as such) at thomasg@methodistchurch.org.uk.
Gill writes:
It feels to me that The Specials and Fun Boy Three have provided a backing track for my life over the last three or four years. ‘The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum’, ‘You’re Wondering Now’, ‘Ghost Town’ and ‘Our Lips Are Sealed’ mostly, but it’s ‘Do Nothing’ that I have honed in on recently.
The song features in Sam Mendes’ latest film ‘Empire of Light’ – a story set in a British seaside town in the early 1980’s. Both the film and the song take you right back to the early 80’s when the Thatcher Government was starting to find their feet. The Winter of Discontent was fresh in people’s minds and the country had backed Margaret Thatcher’s bid for leadership in the hope that her administration would prevent unions from wielding such power again, that the individual would become key, and that privatisation was the route to a successful modern economy.
Yet here we are in 2023 and in some ways it feels like we’re back to 1980 once again. The approach that Margaret Thatcher’s government took appears to have eventually brought us back to square one, rather than change things.
Nothing ever change, oh no
Nothing ever change
But is that really the case? Has nothing ever changed since 1980? I think, maybe, the answer is quite a complicated one and I’m not sure I can reach a conclusive answer.
Have I changed, for example? Have you? Well, physically I have but I think there is still a lot of the teenage me still there. When I was leaving a job at the age of 24, my boss said to me ‘Try not to change too much. Just be yourself in life.’
People say to me just be yourself
Yet I have lived and learned more about me over the years, so maybe I am not only myself but even more myself? Perhaps I am a stronger, less diluted version of the 24yr old who was encouraged not to change too much.
Has society changed? Well, yes and no. We are more progressive, more aware and more inclusive in some ways. Yet in other ways, it feels like we have regressed to the post-war (or even inter-war) years. The song talks of police brutality, and only this week we have been reminded of crimes committed by police officers. 43 years on and it seems that nothing has changed. Perhaps we humans don’t change as much as we like to think we do.
Has the church changed? Well – yes and no. Again, like society, we are more inclusive and progressive but then I ask myself ‘how would the church respond to the members of The Specials if they turned up today’ and I can’t help thinking that many (though not all) churches wouldn’t know how to welcome and include a bunch of young men in their late teens/early 20’s. Especially young men who felt that their life had no meaning. Would we really want to hear about them feeling like they have no value or meaning? Would we really want to do something about it?
I’m just living in a life without meaning
I walk and walk, do nothing
I’m just living in a life without feeling
I talk and talk, say nothing
It’s a good job then, that even though the lyrics could be viewed as depressing and full of despondency, and that offer a succinct summing up of life for young people in the 1980’s, I can feel God giving me a nudge. A poke of my social and spiritual conscience. A call to action.
It’s when we are at our lowest ebb that sparks of love, joy and hope can break through. Instead of doing nothing, it provokes me to do something. How about you?
You may know that Terry Hall, the lead singer of this song, died on 18th December 2022. For some, there was a prophetic nature about his ability to give voice about racism, poverty and politics. What a legacy then, that the songs he made with The Specials, Fun Boy Three and The Colourfield, will continue to challenge and change perception. Thank you Terry and may you rest in peace.
The Specials still have a website – https://www.thespecials.com/
Jane writes:
I am the kind of person drawn to lyrics in songs, and if you were to examine my regular playlists of choices you might find a lot of honesty and deep pain in the words of songwriters I prefer. I do do happy tracks too but find songwriting to be at its best when it’s plumbing the depths of the human soul and settling there.
I was travelling with a friend recently and they said I’d do well to listen to less of that and more of stuff that carries positivity within it. It’s obviously settled with me. Whilst I can’t change the habit of a lifetime and my love for all things soul-searching, I did think that maybe this year I might start to collect songs of support, encouragement and affirmation.
This is one such song
It’s a song from my childhood. A track on a fabulous album that I was allowed to listen to with my older cousins at their house. It’s epic especially if played loud and very hard to sing along to in my experience because of the vocal capability of Art Garfunkel. It has a brilliant ebb and flow to it – as well as saying all the things you might want to someone struggling or in a bit of a spot .
When you’re weary
Feeling small
When tears are in your eyes
I’ll dry them all
I’m on your side
Oh, when times get rough
And friends just can’t be found
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
In the old days, people created cassette tapes for those they cared for and sent messages of love and support. These days I guess you’d share a Spotify, Apple Music or Amazon playlist. Even one track might hit the spot.
So today dig out your favourite track of love and encouragement, send it to whoever needs it and in that moment be that bridge for another. Traverse the troubled waters with them. Be that neighbour that God calls you to be. Tell someone you’ve got their back. Be the one that cares – you never know how much the other might need it.
Oh, and collect a playlist of similar songs if you feel like it. Ain’t music great!
Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel are still making music but not together. You can find out more here https://www.paulsimon.com/ & here https://www.artgarfunkel.com/
Tom writes:
I’m stood in a field on a Somerset farm with thousands of other people – a farm in a village I have been privileged to call home. I’m there principally because I had been hoping to see one of the biggest bands in the world play my back yard. They had pulled out because of injury so instead, at the end of three days not seeing U2 play, I’m stood there, waiting to watch the legend that is Stevie Wonder. But this is the Glastonbury Festival, so there are other bands on beforehand, and second-billing on the Pyramid Stage this night are a group whose electronica defies categorisation and fills dancefloors – Faithless (whose lead singer, Maxi Jazz, died in the run-up to this past Christmas).
I’ll admit that dance music is not my top choice of music style, though my need for good quality drums and bass sounds means I do, nonetheless, have time for well-crafted electronica, from the ground-breaking garage beats of Goldie’s “Inner City Life”, though the trip-hop of Massive Attack and Leftfield, to, yes, the dance-floor vibes and intellectual lyrics of Faithless.
My favourite track by Faithless is “Reverence”, but the track that sticks in my mind from that night at Glastonbury 2010 is another of their anthems. I can close my eyes and hear its pounding beats, see the lights and the crowd, Maxi Jazz on the big screen bouncing and conducting as together he and the crowd, including me, and my sister, and her mates next to me, scream the lyrics which are the track’s title: “We Come 1”.
Ostensibly a love-song, “We Come 1” speaks of the way in which love brings a sense of unity with the one, or ones, whom we love and who love us. And I phrase it that way, with an acknowledgement of possibly multiple participants, because my experience of that song, there in that Somerset field, was beyond simply I and one other – the whole crowd became, in some sense, one. We were joined by a shared sense of love and companionship. It seems to me that in some way this is a lived experience, as well as a lyrical description, of what the Church is supposed to be: whether the picture provided in Revelation of the Lamb and his bride (and in marriage two become one), or the unity described by Christ in John’s Gospel as he prays that his disciples might be one as he and the Father are one, or the bodily unity we find in the Pauline letters and in the Communion service where we declare that, “though we are many, we are one Body because we all share in one Bread”.
Of course, we are all unique individuals, and our faith does not seek to claim that unity is the same as uniformity, that unity with God and with one another is to be merged into some homogenous blob – after all, as Christians we have faith in a Triune God, ever-One yet ever-Three. Most of the time, I’ll be honest, I struggle with what we mean by unity, especially when I look at the breadth of the Church of which I am a part. Yet when I need reminding of what that shared experience can be like, I turn to that moment in a field in my home village, and a band called Faithless, and my faith in the unity God calls us to is restored, even if just for a moment.
If you want to know more about the work of Faithless, start here https://www.faithless.co.uk/
Fidge writes:
Happy New Year everyone!
Lucy Spraggan has a new single out! Woo Hoo! It’s called Balance and immediately spoke to me as a piece of music that might speak to us at the start of a new year.
For those of you familiar with the Friday Fix or if you know me, you’ll know I’m a Lucy Spraggan fan. But that wasn’t always the case – when she first appeared on X Factor in 2012, I wasn’t terribly impressed, but over the past decade her music has grown on me, as has her personality. I really like the way she talks openly about her desire to create a better self and her journey of self-improvement is of course reflected in her music and lyrics. There is something incredibly raw, vulnerable and real about her songs which is perhaps why she connects with folk.
In Balance she reflects on her life:
All the stuff, I know right now
It came from messing up most of my 20’s
It’s changed for now, and I hope it lasts
I spent most of my life feeling quite empty
There’s lots of reasons I’m messed up
I grew up around things that weren’t that healthy
I’m working hard and it’s looking up
If I stick to routines, it’s gonna help me
I love the way that in spite of her desire to be a better person, she realises that this is never going to be perfect or polished as she says:
I’m tryin to learn to love myself
And what’s good for my mental health
I read a lot about self-help
I’ll never be polished
I see the cycles happening now
I’m responsible for shutting them down
It took a while to figure that out
But it’s my job to stop it
But what does this song say to us about a new year? Perhaps there is an invitation here to explore what living our lives in balance might mean for us?
It is my belief that most of us live our lives out of balance. We are too busy, life is too noisy, we are too rushed, our lives are fragmented. To find some balance, we may need to slow down, deepen our awareness, connect with the environment, live a more open life, acknowledge our vulnerabilities. Lucy describes being sober as one of the biggest improvements she’s made in her life. The video of her song Sober is a beautiful, tender and almost painful watch.
At the start of a new year, Balance might provide an invitation to explore what a better self might look like. What is it that you need to do to find some balance? Is there a path you need to take? Something you need to let go off? A something new to take on?
In the lyrics of the song making changes in our lives is not something we do alone – we need people to accompany us, to journey with us, to be a buddy. If you could offer to be a helping hand to someone this year – what would you do? What difference might a helping hand make not just to the other, but to you?
If you could stand back, I used to say that
I thought I needed space to find my balance
But I might need a hand and if you could be that
I might need some help to find my balance, balance
Perhaps as we start this new year, we are being invited into a place of balance.
Find out about Lucy Spraggan here – https://lucyspraggan.com/
It may be the first day of 2023 (Happy New Year everyone!), but it’s also the day that we release the playlist of last year’s Friday Fixes.
The full playlist is on Spotify – here’s the link https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3fB17QY9Hsz6P2LUdPerXA?si=ZMM_p_dhTTyKth7OJacRbA.
There will also be a slimmed-down playlist on SoundCloud later this week. We’ll drop the link when it’s ready.
We’re taking a well-earned break on the Friday Fix this week, so there’s no reflection as such.
You may have seen this video already but if not, here’s comedian Jason Manford with his Assembly Bangers.
You can buy or download the single here – all proceeds go to the Trussell Trust.
https://ingrv.es/assembly-bangers-5pg-1?_ga=2.227965716.841048798.1671716245-772490148.1671716244
Or you can watch the video and pop a donation to the Trussell Trust here https://www.trusselltrust.org/make-a-donation/
See you in 2023!
The Friday Fix is a bit different this week as the reflection has been taken from a book. I came across it in John Green’s ‘The Anthropocene Reviewed’ and thought ‘well this is surely a Friday Fix.’
The book is a series of essays that Green wrote during 2020, and it’s a beautifully eclectic mix. I highly recommend adding it to your ‘To Be Read’ list (there’s a link below to Hive Books if you feel so inclined).
Green writes:
“…’New Partner’ has been my favourite song not by ‘The Mountain Goats’ for over 20 years now, but I’ve never been able to make sense of the lyrics.
One couplet goes ‘And the loons on the moor, the fish in the flow / And my friends, my friends still will whisper hello.’ I know that means something; I just don’t know what. This is soon followed by a line, equally beautiful and baffling: ‘When you think like a hermit, you forget what you know.’
Palace Music is one of the many incarnations of Will Oldham, who sometimes records under his own name and sometimes as the dandyish Bonnie Prince Billy. I like a lot of his songs; he sings about religion and longing and hope in ways that resonate with me, and I love how his voice often seems on the edge of cracking open.
But ‘New Partner’ is not just a song for me. It’s a kind of magic, because it has the ability to transport me to all the moments I’ve heard that song before. For three minutes and 54 seconds, it makes me into people I used to be. Through the song, I am brought back both to heartbreak and to falling in love with enough distance to see them as something more than opposites.
In ‘The Palace,’ Kaveh Akbar writes that ‘Art is where what we survive survives’ and I think that’s true, not only of the art we make but also of the art we love.
Like any magic, you have to be careful with a magical song – listen to it too often, and it will become routine. You’ll hear the chord changes before they come, and the song will lose its ability to surprise and teleport you. But if I’m judicious with a magical song, it can take me back to places more vividly than any other form of memory’
(Extract from The Anthropocene Reviewed ‘New Partner’ chapter p.257-258 (2021))
Find out more about Will Oldham’s music at http://royalstablemusic.com/
‘The Anthropocene Reviewed’ by John Green – https://www.hive.co.uk/Product/John-Green/The-Anthropocene-Reviewed–The-Instant-Sunday-Times-Bestseller/25683161
Nigel writes:
Cousin Jack: “John Wesley gave us a voice” – for God’s sake use it
Trouble is brewing – poverty, real-term pay cuts, a lack of productivity, worker shortages and a resultant cost of living crisis – are causing more and more people to have no choice but to turn to their union and vote for strike action. In the 1830’s, there was also trouble brewing. Life for workers was hard and wages were being cut.
In Dorset, the workers decided to fight back. In the village of Tolpuddle, six leaders of workers were arrested and sentenced to seven years transportation to Australia for taking a secret oath. A huge protest erupted which resulted in freedom for the workers and the foundation of modern-day trade unionism. The leader of the group, George Loveless, was a Methodist lay preacher. He and four of his fellow ‘Tolpuddle Martyrs’ eventually emigrated to Canada, helping build a Methodist Church at Siloam. And that brings me to my Friday Fix song …
I’ve long been a fan of contemporary folk band ‘Show of Hands’. I saw them in concert last month, and they ended their set with one of their most popular songs – ‘Cousin Jack’. It’s a song about miners in the days of old who left their homeland in search of better times. It’s a song that very much resonates with the former mining communities of Nottinghamshire where I saw ‘Show of Hands’ perform:
This land is barren and broken
Scarred like the face of the moon
Our tongue is no longer spoken
And the towns all a-round face ruin
Will there be work in New Brunswick?
Will I find gold in the Cape? If I tunnel way down to Australia
Oh, will I ever escape?
As this verse portrays, in the mid-nineteenth century new mining frontiers in North and South America, Australia and South Africa opened up. Driven by hardship and in search of their fortune, thousands of people from the UK set off to these ‘new’ worlds. Generations of Cornishmen in particular used their skills and emigrated all across the world to earn money as miners. Collectively, these people became known as ‘Cousin Jacks’.
Where there’s a mine or a hole in the ground
That’s what I’m heading for that’s where I’m bound
So look for me under the lode and inside the vein
Where the copper, the clay, the arsenic, and tin
Run in your blood and under your skin
I’ll leave the county behind I’m not coming back
Oh, follow me down Cousin Jack
I’ve heard the ‘Cousin Jack’ song many times, and seen it performed live many times but when listening this time around, one line jumped out at me: “John Wesley gave us a voice”. Against the backdrop of struggle, the song describes how the Good News, communicated by Wesley, gave the miners hope in the darkest of times:
The soil was too poor to make Eden
Granite and sea left no choice
Though visions of heaven sustained us
When John Wesley gave us a voice
Did Joseph once come to St Michael’s Mount
Two thousand years pass in a dream
When you’re working your way in the darkness
Deep in the heart of the seam
Despite huge opposition, physical violence and Establishment repulsion, John Wesley made Methodism the main faith practice in Cornwall. He preached to 32,000 people at Gwennap Pit, near Redruth and local people used their voice to protest against the ‘Parish Rate’ – money that people had to pay to the Church of England – until it was abolished. Many Methodists refused to pay the rate and some were imprisoned because of this.
Trade Unions and Methodism, in my opinion, are two sides of the same coin – both good news, seeking justice, fighting poverty and speaking up for the rights of others: faith and works dovetailing together in the hope of better times. The Good News of Jesus and the inspiration of Wesley still bring me hope and give me a voice. However, we can’t just leave it to telling stories of old or modern-day figures like the inspirational union leader, Mick Lynch, to speak on our behalf. We need to bring our faith and our voices together and speak out today – for the sake of ourselves, each other, and for God’s sake. That’s my intention …
Whether it be because of the inspiration of people like the church-planting, trade union Tolpuddle Martyrs; the hope in desperate times of journeying to somewhere new; refusing to pay unjust ‘taxes’, and/or the efforts of prophetic figures like Mick Lynch, I hope to take encouragement that we do indeed have a voice and we can speak into the void. Thanks for reminding me, ‘Show of Hands’, and thanks for the inspiration, John Wesley.
You can find out more about ‘Show of Hands’ at https://showofhands.co.uk/
The Friday Fix 