The Changes that Come

There seems to be an awful of change happening recently, often unasked and with far-reaching consequences. Knowing how to deal with it can be difficult and lead us to feeling unbalanced and overwhelmed. Tonight, we try to find some still-points within the chaos.  

Journal entry:

23rd January, Thursday

“A robin, one winter,
 Riding out a sleety squall
 On the flailing branch
 Of pyracantha fire.

He often springs to mind
 When squalls hit
 And my world lurches
 Fearfully beneath me.

I wish for his poise
 And his ability to find
 And surf upon the
 Still-point of chaos.”

Episode Information:

In this episode, I talk about Orange Cookie’s beautiful ‘Still Waters and Nighttime Bats’ tea towel that is inspired by this podcast. You can view this and her other designs at Spoonflower. 

I also read a very short extract from The Monk and the Butterfly by Kai T. Murano (published independently, 2024). 

With special thanks to our lock-wheelers for supporting this podcast.

Kevin B.
 Fleur and David Mcloughlin
 Lois Raphael
 Sami Walbury
 Tania Yorgey
 Andrea Hansen
 Chris Hinds
 David Dirom
 Chris and Alan on NB Land of Green Ginger
Captain Arlo
Rebecca Russell
Allison on the narrowboat Mukka
Derek and Pauline Watts
Anna V.
Orange Cookie
Mary Keane.
Tony Rutherford.
Arabella Holzapfel.
Rory with MJ and Kayla.
Narrowboat Precious Jet.
Linda Reynolds Burkins.
Richard Noble.
Carol Ferguson.
Tracie Thomas
Mark and Tricia Stowe
Madeleine Smith

General Details

Theme music: ‘Crying Cello’ by Oleksii_Kalyna (2024) licensed for free-use by Pixabay (189988).

Narrowboat engine recorded by 'James2nd' on the River Weaver, Cheshire. Uploaded to Freesound.org on 23rd June 2018. Creative Commons Licence. 

Piano and keyboard interludes composed and performed b

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:28 Journal entry
• 1:03 Welcome to NB Erica
• 2:22 News from the moorings
• 8:46 The 'Still Waters and Nighttime Bats' tea towel bu Orange Cookie
• 10:12 Cabin chat
• 13:37 The Changes that Come
• 33:12 Excerpt from Kai T Murano's 'The Monk and the Butterfly'
• 34:12 Signing off
• 34:24 Weather Log

Transcript

JOURNAL ENTRY

23rd January, Thursday

“A robin, one winter,
 Riding out a sleety squall
 On the flailing branch
 Of pyracantha fire.

He often springs to mind
 When squalls hit
 And my world lurches
 Fearfully beneath me.

I wish for his poise
 And his ability to find
 And surf upon the
 Still-point of chaos.”

[MUSIC]

WELCOME

It’s been a day of sunshine and blue skies, but even though it felt warm in the sun, the dawn frost still lay white and cold in the shadowed places. Now the night has fallen, the frost once more stretches out, like a cat uncurling from its sleep. A thin haze softens the stars and shuffles the constellations around. A light wind, stirs along the towpath, rustling the dead leaves with its cold breath.   

This is the narrowboat Erica narrowcasting into the darkness of a chilly late January night to you wherever you are.

It's so lovely to see you. I was really hoping that you could make it tonight. Come in out of the chill and make yourself comfortable by the stove. The kettle has just boiled, the biscuit barrel has been restocked, the night awaits us. Welcome aboard.

[MUSIC]

NEWS FROM THE MOORINGS  

I don’t know about you, but from my experience recently, it certainly appears that we are living in ‘interesting times’! There’s a lot going on, isn’t there?

The weather swings in moods and even just these past couple of weeks, we’ve had a taste of almost all seasons. The skies build and clear, the ground glitters with frost and then softens to a waterlogged porridge. Each day, it feels, different.

A low-pressure system that was not only nearing a record level but which also intensified at a staggeringly rapid rate, brought in Storm Éowyn. We were relatively sheltered here and although it got very blustery, we missed some of the worst effects experienced by those to the north and south. I think that this might have been partly due to its tracking, but also, we are screened a little more from the westerly winds. The north easterly winds of Storm Darragh at the beginning of last December, wrought much more damage for us – bringing down a number of local trees.  

There was also some sad news. The last remaining cygnet died this week. I’d been concerned about her for a while and over the last couple of days of her life, she appeared to crave human company. Climbing into boats and sleeping at night in their sterns or well decks of a couple of the neighbouring boats. Wednesday night, I caught sight of her halfway up the canal bank, she had hooked her neck over one the alder saplings to stop her sliding back into the water and drowning – she was too weak to hold her head up. She was also losing blood, but I couldn’t see from where. She was still aware of her surroundings, but clearly in a very weakened state. She let me gently unwrap her from the alder branch and lift her to a quiet safe spot on the grass. She tucked her head under her wing and nestled down. We sat for a while together in a night of gathering mist that slowly quenched the stars from the sky. We both, I felt, intuitively knew that this was the time for her to leave as she, so naturally, it seemed, found that one final stream she needed to swim. There was no struggle, just a quiet sense of letting go.

So much of it resonated so strongly with this time last year when Dad was dying. That quiet – almost peaceful – feel. I didn’t expect to be so blind-sided by the emotions it evoked though. Why was this midwifing of a young swan into her death so, so, much harder than with Dad? Why did this time cut me so viscerally deep? What did it say about my relationship with Dad and with a swan? But of course, it is never really as simple as that. That visceral wound, that overwhelming tsunami of emotions that hit me as I stroked the soft down of a neck that was never to know the pure white of adult plumage or the rush of wind and wing-song in flight, was as much about Dad’s dying as it was for this little swan. For our lives are not filled with a linear succession of disparate and disconnected events, but comprise of an interconnected tapestry - an ecology of events - woven together so that their threads become indistinguishable. Each event and experience connected and inherent in the other, in the oneness of our living. This short time, sitting with a cygnet as she slipped away from the world created a space and experience that allowed me to acknowledge feelings and process emotions that were not possible at the time: An unlocking of hidden locks; a shepherding into the pastures of grief that were always there, but unrecognised. A circling back to help complete – or at least move a little more towards completeness – the task still to be finished. It was an opportunity for me to see things I wasn't able to see at the time, to visit emotions and loss that I wasn't open to - or unable - or perhaps, just not ready to experience at the time. And not even with just Dad, but with Mum too, and all the other losses I have experienced. There is also a strange and fitting congruity about Dad’s death and the death of this swan, that (at the moment) I can’t quite put my finger on – but I am fairly certain that Dad would have understood.         

However, this week also brough much happier news – Linda (who might be known better to listeners as Orange Cookie) sent me a beautiful tea towel that she designed having been inspired by this podcast. It is called ‘Still Waters and Nighttime Bats’ and it is wonderful. What makes it even more special, is that the abstract looking background is actually sonograms of the calls of pipistrelle bats! I love the design and it captures the feelings I want to create in the podcast so perfectly. It's beautiful. It's far too good to be put to use and Donna is working on framing it and so we can display it here in the Erica. Orange Cookie has a number of wonderful designs, many of which featuring narrowboats or canal-based themes and you can see them in her online shop on Spoonflower. I will put the link to it in the programme notes, as well as add a photograph of the tea towel to the episode’s page on the NoSWpod website

[MUSIC]

CABIN CHAT

[MUSIC]

THE CHANGES THAT COME

The world and all of life continues to flow around us following the movements of their own cycles and rhythms; and the swells and ebbs of their breathings. Above us, the January moon sharpens to a crescent, until soon in the coming days it will be pared away to a fingernail of light until once more it sinks back within the darkness of its new birth (or it would be, if it was not at this moment below the horizon). The wheel of the seasons slowly turns – in a week or two’s time, it will be Imbolc. The Celtic New Year; the return of the light; the signalling march of Spring’s return, and the sun’s progressively climbing arc over our heads. And the sheep in the fields are getting plumper with lamb, and the rooks roister around their rookeries. The drake mallards are already looking resplendent. The metallic green of their head feathers shines glossily bright, and the adolescents, ‘all suited and booted and nowhere to go’, strut and squabble. And the sap is beginning to rise. We share this earth with so many complex rhythms and flux and flows. They are all different, independent, marching to a beat unheard and unrecognised by others, but melding together as one mesmerising helical dance of our journeys through this world. The world of the heron might be completely alien and even unknowable to me, and I might be deaf and blind to the routines and patterns of his life and the impulses that prompt them. But I do know this. We will share the same sunrises. The same sharp showers that sting the water’s surface into a frenzy of bubbles. We will feel the same winds that cut across the fields. We will sense the same warmth of sun on our bodies. We will stand and watch the sun drop behind the trees on the skyline in the west. And this is the truth of our lives, that we are all in motion, we are part of that great breathtaking murmuration that is life.  

Movement and change is everywhere. There is no still point in a river.    

Our very state of being is woven upon the loom of change, movement, transience. We do have an inbuilt expectation of change – although we tend to call it other things – and if it is not there, it feels odd, wrong; dead; for life itself is predicated on the transient. Change is as much our natural state as it is a river’s, or the skies.

And yet it can also be so hard. It seems to be a perennial question of this podcast, one that I return to time and time again, “If change is so much part of our life, why is dealing with it so difficult?” Because, it is not always easy is it, facing these changes that come? Especially, those that seem destructive, inflicting pain or hurt or loss. Change, almost by definition includes loss and the leaving – But with some changes, perhaps most of them, the encounter of the new brings benefits. The gains outweigh the loss so that we do not even think about what has now gone. But some change hurts and that sting of loss can ferment complex and sometimes powerful emotions. At these times, it’s difficult to feel grounded, at peace.

And, I don’t know if it is just me, but there seems to be such a lot of changes happening recently, globally and locally, and some with far reaching consequences. The loss of a swan. Trees, whose presence and shapes have imprinted themselves onto my life and who have shaded and sheltered me, gone. An old field in which I used to watch rabbits and rooks, torn up for development. Changes that I sometimes feel at a loss to know how to properly deal with.

And even this podcast is not exempt from the movement of change – as perhaps you might have already noticed. I find managing these changes particularly difficult. The very heart of the podcast is its familiarity, its dependability, that in all the chaos of movement and change, here is some place quiet, reliable, safe. For me, one of its main strengths is that, by and large, it has not materially changed that much since episode 1. Things have changed, of course, but they tend to be small. The main elements are, pretty much the same as those found in the first recording. This is partly because I like the format and I think, for me, it works. Initially, as I was starting, I did have some ideas that would align it more closely with the more expected podcast format. However, I am also aware that as the listenership has developed and as I have got to know how it is often listened to, that it is the predictability (for want of a better word) that a lot of listeners find useful. There is comfort, particularly in a podcast like this that aims create something familiar and secure in a world that feel incomprehensible and alien.

However, a change that has come is one that I have been battling with for well of three years – actually almost before it started. Something that has grown into almost a hallmark of each episode is the theme music (‘The Swan’ by Saint-Saëns). In fact, the outro embedded under the reading from that night’s weather log has been one of the most commented features of this podcast – even if some of those commenters were not quite sure what the music was.

When I was putting the podcast together, I actually had in mind a different piece of music – a lilting bluesy-Jazz saxophone. It sorted worked well, but then came across an old recording of Saint-Saëns and that seemed to fit perfectly.

The use of published music on podcasts is a fraught area. Actually, more than one organisation who support and offer guidance to podcast produces simply state – unless it is your own (or composed and performed for you alone, don’t use music. However, other guidance was more detailed. There are times when you can use music without getting into trouble with the composers, artists, recording companies, as well as the licensing authorities who monitor and police ‘unofficial’ broadcasts of music. The recording I used was in a library and labelled under the Creative Commons License. This meant that, as long as I was not using it for commercial gain, or materially altering it, it was available for use to people like me. Actually, in all honesty, I was aware that that was open to challenge, but as, at that time, I was expecting no more than 20 to 30 people (family and friends) listening, I didn’t look any deeper. ‘The Swan’ seems to have become so inherent to the podcast’s identity that I have been very loathe to replace it. 

However, over the years, as the listenership rose into the hundreds and then thousands and then into the tens of thousands, the nagging worry about the legality of its use kept raising its head. Both the actual recording and Saint-Saëns is now, technically, in the Public Domain, but some of his work is still held under licence. The move from Google Podcasts to YouTube (that is more integrated with the music licencing bodies as well as anti-pirating schemes) has moved things to a head. Their notifications have informed me that there is no breach of copyright, however, because the music is licenced, they block it from particular countries and territories. The list of countries has been growing (as well as my unease with using the theme) and now include US, Canada, UK and Australasia. This is why, the YouTube episodes might appear a little sporadic and why, if you compare the episodes listed on YouTube with those on the NoSWpod website you will find that there are fewer on YouTube.

I think I have spotted why the blocking seems to be so inconsistent – affecting some episode and not others, and I might have a system to work round it. However, I’m just not into playing the system.

There are two solutions, I create two recordings – one for the podcast directories and one for YouTube with the intro and outro removed. The incidental music is fine as it was created for me by Helen. However, this still doesn’t address the ethical question of using another person’s work without consent or licence – something, given the AI controversies at the moment being trained on works without the artists’ or authors’ permission, I am unwilling to do.

I tried to see if I could get a licence to use ‘The Swan’. However, this is a legal nightmare and it became apparent that, even for a very small non-commercial podcast like this, tracking down the right licence holders can be extremely difficult and that it would involve buying not one licence, but the minimum of three (from different bodies). I would also need to register the podcast with Company House to become a legally (and HMRC) recognised (and accountable) business, as well as applying to get the podcast recognised as a not profit business, if I wanted to avoid paying the premium price for PPL and PRS licences that the major broadcasters are required to pay. Plus, the onus would be on me that I had gained the consent of all parties involved and which is not always clear who they are and where to contact them. My most optimistic estimates could see the costs running into about a thousand pounds per year, per it could easily rise to be a lot more.

The other alternative was to simply not have a theme. I played around with this option, but particularly the weather log felt flat and it lost a lot of its soothing quality. Helen’s music is great and fits well with the internal sequences, however, it didn’t quite flow with either the intro or outro.

I have spent a lot of time looking through agencies that provide music for podcasts, videos, etc. You have to be careful, YouTube, for example, has a great library, but you can only use them on YouTube. I eventually did run to earth a site that offers what I have been looking for and spent a long time going through the different tracks. It is licenced to be used across all podcast platforms. I think it fits quite well with the podcast. It is a lovely piece by a Ukrainian musician, Oleksii Kalyna, called ‘Crying Cello.’ Although I will miss ‘The Swan’, I also like the idea that another small artist can get a bit of support from this.             

The changes that come can often feel so difficult, so unwelcome, so destructive – and we would be fools to pretend that sometimes they are all those things.  

But change, no matter how difficult we might find it, is part of the natural flow of life. The rivers flow, the night sky tilts and circles above out heads, the cycles of the season match the ebb and flooding of the tides. The robin on the flailing pyracantha branch in the midst of a sleety squall, might not relish the storm’s icy bite, but nevertheless, surfs that bucking twig with the quiet poise of a champion surfer. These changes that come upon us can either overwhelm us or become the wave that supports us. To find the stillness, the balance, within the flow of movement. To regain our balance in the tilt of change and the still-point amid the chaos. For a long time, I resisted this way of thinking – it seemed too much like passively acceptance of fatalism. It is the opposite of passive, it is active, and not only that, but a creative outburst. Creating wonderful new things and meanings. Transforming apparent obstacles and hurts into new paths, through which we encounter new songs, new sunrises, new dances, new experiences.  

Learning to find balance and ride these, sometimes catastrophic cataracts that we meet during our lives, is deeply embedded within a lot of eastern ideas and philosophies. The emphasis is not battling against the situation we find ourselves in, or through brute willpower trying to change it. It’s is about adaptability. I love these words of Kai T Murano in his book, The Monk and the Butterfly.

[READING] 

SIGNING OFF 

This is the narrowboat Erica signing off for the night and wishing you a very peaceful and restful night. Good night.

WEATHER LOG