Whistle

This may be therapy. I’m sure it’s therapy. It’s a continuation of my recently terminated psychotherapy sessions, except now it’s just me, a keyboard and whoever deigns to read this blog. I’m trying to get my mind in some sort of order. I’m looking for patterns. Repeating behaviour. I’m pretty sure I know some of them. Maybe there’s more. Maybe not.

I’m trying to deal with this huge lurking monster; a whirl of emotion, fear, insecurity and vulnerability deep inside. It’s been there ages. I need to know more. Then I may be able to cope with it, deal with it somehow.

Anyhoo.

I took up whistling just over a year ago. That’s not quite true. I first picked up a whistle in my mid teens. I’m talking penny whistle here. Not the Acme Thunderer heard on playing fields up and down the country at the weekend.

I suppose it actually goes back a bit further. In the mid 70s, as a young kid, I knew there had to be more to music than Donny Osmond and The Bay City Rollers. I discovered John Peel and a whole new world opened up. I discovered Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull amongst others. It was Tull that really put me on the path towards folk. That mixture of electric and acoustic guitar, flutes and assorted other acoustic instruments.

As most young lads do I bought a cheap guitar, and played it exceedingly badly. I used to go to UMIST on a Saturday night to their Rock Disco. During the week I’d go to Mossley Folk Club near Ashton-Under-Lyne. I bought a penny whistle; a cheap Generation C, and a book on how to play it. I played it very badly. Nowadays, with the internet and YouTube etc it’s dead easy to find music, both the dots and recordings from which to learn. Then, getting hold of music was rather harder and rather more expensive than nowadays. My interest foundered as Agricultural College, work and then life in general, got in the way.

Two years ago, having passed through various phases of other hobbies and pastimes, I picked up a guitar once more. Instead of a big powerful motorbike, my middle age crisis was to play a bit of music or maybe I wanted to be a ‘Rock God’ ™. I bought a cheap guitar and played it badly, but I improved a bit. I bought a better (though still quite cheap) guitar. I improved a bit more. At least I could play a few chords reasonably well this time. I started at the local folk sessions. They were and are, a very forgiving bunch. Thanks for putting up with me. I still couldn’t get the hang of finger-picking and (wanting to be the centre of attention, yet not wanting to draw attention to myself – something I may return to in the future) I wanted to play the melody. I dug out my collection of old and battered whistles. I don’t know why I still had them but I’d kept them and they had moved from house to house over the intervening years. All of a sudden things started to work. I could actually learn the melody reasonably quickly. More to the point I wanted to. I enjoyed, and still enjoy, and hopefully will enjoy for a long time, the challenge of new tunes. And there’s thousands to learn.

Fortunately whistles are a relatively cheap drug musically. A cheap one can be a couple of quid. Between £15 and £50 there’s a huge range of very playable, good sounding whistles.  I could indulge myself in WhOA Disorder (Whistle Obsessive Acquisition) however I now have a Colin Goldie high D. At over £150 it’s quite a lot for a ‘penny’ whistle but bugger me it’s good. I don’t need another one for a while, except maybe a £220 Low D.

The point of all this? I still strum the guitar a bit but I play the whistle obsessively (just ask the poor unfortunate neighbours). I will continue to do so for as long as the urge continues. Unlike photography (another story for another time) I don’t want to try and make money from doing it. That way lies madness, financial ruin and turning something rather pleasurable and a joy in to a chore and a drudge. Maybe in time I will lose interest in playing music and move on to something else. That may be in a year. It could be four or five. I’ll not tempt fate and just let it happen.

Oh! And tonight I’m picking up a melodeon. The neighbours haven’t heard nothing yet.