London's thought-provoking songsmith ANDY FLANNAGAN talks us through the tracks on his latest album
London-based political activist, author and singer/songwriter Andy Flannagan hasn't released an album since 2004's 'Son'. That's all changed with the Elevation release 'Drowning In The Shallow', produced by Grammy award winning Alan Branch. This song-by-song survey are selected chunks from the book Notes From The Shallow End, to be published later in the summer.
"Drowning In The Shallow"
I lived in Luton for
seven years. I loved it. Honest. I loved the people (and the excellent
transport links!). For quite awhile, however, there was something in
my gut telling me that I needed to be in London to get more involved
in politics. I really didn't want to leave my Luton life, with a
fantastic group of friends, a strong sense of locality and a great
cricket team. I knew I had to go, but boy did I procrastinate. I kept
dipping my toe in the water, but fear of the unknown and fear of
failure kept me running back up the beach. During the same period of
my life I was doing a lot of swimming, and I realised that especially
when in the sea, I felt like I was doing something I was born to do.
The sensation of motion with my hands crisply cutting the surface of
the water was glorious, but there were many times that I just couldn't
be bothered getting out to the deep water, even though I knew that it
was a place where I would feel truly alive. At that point something in
me feels connected to the wild sea and the beauty of creation - I
realise I am an independent, yet so dependent creature working and
breathing. Yet getting to that place of challenge means conquering
some fears and being prepared for a level of discomfort that the world
trains us to avoid. For too long I settled for the comfortable and the
familiar. That's where the last verse of the song springs from really.
Resurrection isn't possible without crucifixion. Think of a seed - it
needs to be utterly dead before it can explode into life. New life
isn't possible without the death of the stuff that stops us truly
living. It's also why a baptism can sometimes look like a drowning.
"The Reason"
I meet so many people, young men in
particular, who spend much of their 20-something lives asking the
questions, "Why am I here?", "What am I meant to be doing with my
life?" and, "Who am I meant to be doing it with?" So much angst and
energy is spent seeking out the "right" path and the "right" partner.
It feels as if folks are staring at a map of the world and desperately
trying to work out exactly where they should place a pin. You get the
sense that if that pin is as much as a millimetre away from the exact
point where it is meant to be, then it could be disastrous. Or at
least there is a presumption that you could miss out on what has been
"planned". My fear is that we all spend so much of our lives trying to
work out the specifics of what we are "destined for" or "called to"
that we miss the obvious stuff that we are all called to. There is
such emotional investment in finding "the answer" that we miss the
importance of fleshing out what we do know to be true - the
non-negotiables that come without question marks attached.
"Pieces Of April"
While on holiday in Norfolk a
crew of us from Luton watched the movie Pieces Of April. In it, an
estranged daughter played by Katie Holmes is desperately trying to
piece together a family Thanksgiving dinner with very limited
resources. This will probably be their last ever Thanksgiving
together, as her mum is dying of cancer. Her relationship with her mum
is however totally dysfunctional for various reasons. In scene after
scene you observe the heart-wrenching effects of this fragmentation.
Afterwards I just went to my bedroom and cried. The broken
relationships represented in it were such strong echoes of the tough
situations of the young people I knew in Luton. As I sat crying, a
scene flashed into my head. It was of a jigsaw puzzle whose pieces
were scattered all over a floor. That is normally a positive, exciting
moment, filled with the anticipation of things coming together.
However, this scene was darker. The box in which the pieces resided
had been carelessly tossed away. Young people of the 21st century are
often left trying to put the pieces together without the photo or
picture of how they all fit together. They don't have a big picture or
a big story that makes sense of and gives context to their little
story. Many haven't been provided with that framework because of
physically or emotionally absent parents. For many more, no-one has
told them that there is a big story. Surely part of our job is to give
back the box.
"Ego"
I am slowly realising that my ego inflates
when even the slightest gap appears between who I truly am and who I
present myself to be. You're only as honest as your last Facebook
status update. The online social media phenomenon means that we have
all become our own press officers, selecting and spinning what makes
it out into the public realm. For "Friends" read "audience." For
"Status update" read "Press release." Some of us don't pretend that
it's 'real'. We use it to publicise things and scavenge for ideas to a
wide clientele that few believe are "real-world-equivalent" friends.
We dip in and out, having had the benefit of building relationships
normally for years. It is more of a flirtation (but still a
potentially dangerous and time-wasting one) than a marriage. However,
I do reckon that we are potentially betraying the generations that
follow us. The problem is that many young people are growing into this
as their main means of interaction, having not known anything
different. Throw in the increasingly and disturbingly visual weighting
of online media and you have all the ingredients you need for a
generation of public image obsessed folks who have lost contact with
anything deeper than a screen.
"Seven Storeys"
While we were in Cairo recently
Jen and I were invited for dinner to the apartment of an Egyptian
family. They spoke at length of the challenges of living as Christians
in a majority Muslim nation. One of the ladies recounted many stories
of the discrimination she experienced on a daily basis on public
transport, at work, or simply in the street. Verbal insults and
spitting were commonplace. However nothing prepared us for hearing the
story of their friend from the same apartment block. On the seventh
floor lived a lady called Nadia who because of their care and kindness
had started to ask questions about their faith. She started to
secretly attend their church, and became a Christian. However as with
so many people like her (an estimated half million people in Egypt)
she kept her new faith hidden from her family, as conversion to
Christianity from Islam often carries unbearable consequences,
especially for women. This carried on for some months until things got
to the point where Nadia could not keep the news from her husband,
wanting to share with him the reason why her life felt transformed for
the better. One evening, she told her husband what had happened, and
he threw her to her death from the apartment's seventh floor balcony.
After dinner I walked out to our hosts' identical balcony four floors
below. I stared up and then down to the ground, churning the reality
around in my head and guts. I had heard similar stories before, but I
had never been in the neighbourhood.
"This Poet"
Has left me without words....
"Healing"
Whether we like it or not, we are all
products of someone else. The modern world can fool us into believing
that we are truly independent beings, cast free from the shackles of
family and history, but the more I grow up, the more I realise I am
the product of my parents. Happily that makes me smile broadly, as
even though my bias is pretty huge, I believe them to be the best
parents in the world! However, I know many other people for whom that
same smile is either forced, or an honest grimace. They have not known
an encouraging, supportive context in which to grow up. Even if it has
been a generally positive experience, there have been specific words,
actions or a lack thereof, that have sowed lies deep into their
understanding of who they are. Understanding that our parents were
themselves the products of their parents, and so on, back to our
furthest ancestors, is, however, key to releasing them from our
expectations of perfection. This is especially true when we are faced
with the consequences of their questionable actions or inactions in
our own lives. I honestly believe that there is a heartbreaking story
behind every heartbreaking story; but I also believe that
unconditional love can break cycles that have gone on for generations.
"Addictions"
I love the TV series The West Wing.
I mean I really, really love it. I know I am not alone in this
passion. The scripts and characters are incredible, and that may be a
gloriously good thing. However, this song is my confessional for all
the times I have chosen fantasy over reality. For all the times I have
chosen easy, controllable, fake relationships over the people next
door. My neighbours are less glossy, less witty, and less good looking
than anyone in the West Wing, but they're real.
"I Will Not Be Leaving"
On the very last day of
a trip to Uganda in 2007 we were brought to an amazing place called
Sanyu baby orphanage. I had been to orphanages before, but the 12
months preceding this visit had included much precious time with
Hannah, my niece. Through her I had become well aware of how a
well-nurtured, well-loved and well-held child interacts with their
surroundings and particularly with others in the vicinity. So it was
traumatic to be introduced to the children of Sanyu. The contrast
could not have been greater. These babies have been left on the
streets of Kampala, sometimes in ditches, sometimes in toilets, either
because their families have no resource left to care for them, or
because they are unwanted. Some of them are left alone for days before
they are discovered. The effects of this isolation were all too
painfully visible. We were encouraged by the staff to spend some time
"up close" with the kids, as any small amount of contact can be
helpful. A little guy called Joseph who was 18 months old caught my
eye. He was covered in sweat and staring at the wall. I went to sit
with him and then hold him. At no point did he make eye contact with
me. When I put my finger into his little hand, expecting his tiny
fingers to curl around mine, there was just no elasticity or response
to my touch. Toys like jack-in-the-boxes that would have brought
squeals of delight from my sister's kids brought squeals of fear from
Joseph. It was so painful to see the indelible effects of the
deprivation of love. You wondered how any of these kids would get by
in life with this horrendous reverse headstart. I resolved to stay
with Joseph until I saw some sign of him interacting with me.
"Fragile"
In November 2004 I had the privilege
of visiting a fishing community just south of Chennai, on the
south-eastern coast of India. Times were hard because the fish stocks
were decreasing and there was no other useful employment in the
vicinity. The beach itself was becoming more and more overcrowded with
most of the community living in little set-to shacks vulnerable to any
strong gust of wind. Our church were working with an amazing church in
Chennai that was trying to help this impoverished community. We had a
wonderful afternoon playing in the warm Indian Ocean with the kids
from the area. They loved surfing in on the incredible waves, but all
they had were little rough rectangles of wood and plastic. No
surfboards or body boards here. We gave this great little sport the
moniker "Extreme Clipboarding". I remember being so happy, feeding off
the infectious joy of these beautiful children. They loved looking at
the photos of themselves that I had been taking with my camera, and
this revved up the competition to catch the next wave in the most
artistic way possible. We left excited at the possibility of being
involved in this community's future, especially with regard to
improving their housing. Fast forward to the 27th December. I get a
phone call to say that three quarters of that community have been
wiped out by the tsunami that wreaked havoc all over south-east Asia.
My first reaction is, "You cannot be serious. We were with those guys
just a month ago!" A distant problem was brought very close to home.
"Whole"
Something happened to me last summer. It
was a relatively new experience. I was genuinely sad. "Welcome to the
real world", I hear you cry. I had become pretty stressed about an
event I was working on. Various things had gone wrong, and more
importantly for me, some relationships were out of kilter. I lay awake
at night thinking incessantly about things. I also woke early in the
morning. It was as if the negativity wanted to plant itself in my day
before I had a chance to recalibrate to some truth. It neutered me. I
retreated to making safe decisions to avoid conflict or excessive
challenge. What was happening was no worse than any of the other
challenges I have faced during my life. What was different was the
creaking state of my soul and spirit. As I sat face-to-face with my
none-too-impressive coping mechanisms, I could see more clearly how
much of me was broken and how "Work in progress" would be a useful
sign for me to wear.
"Fall"
When I was in my 20s I was always in a
rush. Subliminally I think I believed I needed to achieve a whole set
of things before I was 30 to make an impact on the world. The things
that I wanted to achieve were good things. They mostly weren't for my
benefit (though the motivations behind them veered from selfless to
selfish, like a metronome). Then one day lying in bed, aged 31, I had
a revelation. It really didn't matter whether I achieved what I was
thinking about by the age of 32 or 37. What was the difference in the
big scheme of things? For the first time in my life I was choosing
between doing it slowly and well, or doing it fast to inject some
sense of completion into my frail psyche. I am not saying that I
always choose right now, but at least I am aware there is often that
choice to be made.