Advent 22 – 22 December 2021
Good morning,
Behind today’s window are some meditations from King Creosote. Kenny Anderson, as he is also known, was brought up in St Andrews, attended Madras College, and lives in the east Neuk. He has released more than 40 albums, and been behind a record label and multiple music festivals. He comes from a musical family – his father Billy Anderson is known to many in St Andrews and beyond as an accordionist, dance band leader and teacher, and regularly played for worship at Largoward Church when I was minister there.
King Creosote’s music may not have overtly religious themes. But there are times when he catches emotions that get to the heart of the human condition. In his brilliant soundtrack to the film made from Scottish archive film, From Scotland with Love, there are a couple of songs which express the hopes (and fears) of Advent.
Here is Miserable Strangers, about the experience of exile, of farewells, of hope of return.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoyUmJZRjJQ
The lyrics seem to speak of our pandemic experience too, with partings, not knowing when we’ll meet again. And does it not feel this winter, with renewed fears and constraints, that we are done with being brave?
I’ve done with being brave
And oh how we slaved to pave our way
And only to be dropped upon this quay
And only to be press-ganged overseas
Is this the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?
And these miserable strangers will be the making of our friends
They’ve been dropped upon this quay
Just the same as you and me
With each step forward there’s two looks back
Are you so bewildered inside?
But you know we’ll have the new life that we talked of loud and proud
Hack them high and hold them dear
For we’ll soon forget these faces in the crowd blurred by our tears
And yet we’ll miss them year on year
So let’s pull ourselves together like the others
We’ll throw our hats into the air
And try to raise a hearty cheer
And at the back of my mind and I was always hoping I might just get back
At the back of my mind and I was always hoping I might just get back
Always hoping I might just get back
At the back of my mind I was always hoping I might just get back
At the back of my mind I was always hoping I might just get back
Always hoping that I might just get back
Always hoping that I might just get back
Is this the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?
A further track from From Scotland with Love is Something to Believe in, with archive footage of cityscapes, the Callanish Stones, landscape, industry, trains, a milkman, shipyards, trams, docks, and coming home at the end of the day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGFnClH0E94
Dreaming without sleeping
It’s morning are you leaving?
But our story it has only begun
And are you willing it to end?
You promised me a feeling
Something to believe in
You promised me a feeling
Now promise to be real
It’s the story of Scotland which has only begun. But it could be the story of humanity or creation as a whole. It’s a song of promise and of hope, a song of faith.
As for a traditional Christmas song, here is his performance of O Holy Night, alongside The Cairn String Quartet
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03ch4zn
And finally an image from yesterday’s Candlelit Labyrinth on the longest night. It was a chilly but beautiful still evening, and the path through the light give the chance for reflection (we walked it three times). And, echoing King Creosote, perhaps with each step forward, there were two looks back:
Yours,
Donald.