Platform 1 live music charity event

It's a privilege to be part of a small group of local musicians, along with Platform 1 mental health crisis charity, to be putting on a live music Christmas fundraiser.

We know people like to get out with friends and work colleagues to celebrate the upcoming Christmas festivities. We also know that Christmas parties can be quite costly, so with the cost of living crisis many people are going through, we wanted to do something fun and affordable.

Tickets are £10 each, 100% of which is donated to Platform 1 mental health crisis charity. So not only do you get a great night out, you'll be contributing to a great cause. We'll also have a raffle, with prizes donated by local businesses. You can buy your tickets here:

Tickets - Platform 1 live music Christmas fundraiser

We'd love for you to join us on Friday 9th December from 7pm to 11pm, at St Patrick's Community Centre (2 Trinity Street, Huddersfield).

We'll have Joe Public, a party band covering hits from the 60's to 00's - indie to disco pop classics and local vocalist Liam Kershaw performing smooth soulful acoustic tracks mixing soul with modern originals. These guys will make for a great party atmosphere.

I'll be playing original acoustic tracks from my 'Sirens and Sentinels' and 'Urbanista' EP's, along with tracks from my latest album, 'All My Ghosts'. You can get the online links to all these tracks here: www.TheDeadPoetMusic.com

The ambiguity of songs over time

In a previous post I gave some explanation of the book and the ambiguity of songs - What is All my Ghosts? As much as the same song can mean different things to different people at the same time, our own relationship with a song can change over time, often through life events.

This has happened with one song in particular on the All my Ghosts album - Until Tomorrow.

For all I espouse about not playing other artists songs (this is about lack of patience to learn) I should really say I don't do covers, because Until Tomorrow wasn't written by me. This is a song written by my good friend Adrian, who sent me some lyrics once and asked if I could make something of them.

Now, I couldn't tell you at that point exactly what it meant to Adrian, but I could understand it was about the pain of loss, of grief and that internal struggle when something effects us deeply in our personal life. I could sympathise with that when I was putting the chords together, and tried to evoke that sense of feeling when I was singing it.

Although I only recorded that song for the album little more than a year ago, I think it dates back 4 years or so, when the lyrics first landed in my inbox. It's also a little more than a year ago that my mother passed away, which gave rise to such a tremendous sense of loss and grief that even now I can't put into words.

That loss, which I'm not going to dwell on here, completely changed my own feelings toward

Until Tomorrow. Sympathy morphed into empathy, the idea of loss now a reality. I've only recently started practicing playing the song again in the last few weeks, playing it publicly for the first time again just a few nights ago - you can see that performance in the video here.

Playing it live wasn't actually that difficult, but playing it live made it speak to me in a different way than it had in previous performances. It felt completely relevant.

Where I initially put those words to music as a favour for a friend, I'm living in a changed world now, one that will never be the same. I'll be forever grateful now, not only that the song exists, but that I'm able to sing and perform it.

Songs will always mean something slightly different based on our individual experiences, but it's songs like this which also bring us closer together as human beings. Through shared experiences and our own stories, the ambiguity of a songs meaning can be eroded a great deal. This is just one example.

Ian Curtis - suicide and mourning

When I first came to know who Ian Curtis was, who Joy Division were and listened for the first time to the album Unknown Pleasures, I was 16 years old. A whole decade after he took his own life.

That album completely blew me away, with it's deep base lines and haunting guitar highs. The vocals felt distant and present at the same time, more real and human than anything I'd ever previously heard - the humanity is what got me, as if I was forcibly pinned to the wall, eyes wide opening, feeling and seeing almost for the first time.

That memory of first listening to Unknown Pleasures has never left me.

I used to think it was strange that I developed a sense of mourning for someone I'd never met, had no connection to other than listening to their music, only became aware of 10 years after he died. But I don't think it was simply that he died, and at such a young age. It wasn't an accidental overdose or a misadventure, like with some other iconic musicians and singers. It was suicide. That's what made it different. It was a decision so remarkably sad.

With age I've come to feel sadness for anyone who's last act is to take their own life. My sadness for Ian Curtis then wasn't borne out of hero worship, but simple humanity. It just happened that he wrote lyrics and delivered them in a way that meant something to me.

If you've ever read anything about him on a surface level, it's easy to point to his lyrics and be aware of his depression, in a way that makes you think his suicide was inevitable. But listening to his band mates on the news recently, talking about him just being normal and that he smiled and laughed and, whilst different and not normal in some ways, was just a bloke. It's only hindsight that allows us to see how deeply troubled someone must have been, to take that step to end their own life.

It's difficult to know what someone is going through, how bad it is for them, even if on the outside they seem perfectly fine. Any suicide is horrendous, and the number of men today taking their own lives is incredibly, incredibly sad - and worrying.

If you're in that place, or if you're lucky enough to notice that someone might be struggling, please, please, please seek help. There are people and places where you can access help.

Platform 1 - men's mental health and crisis charity - Huddersfield

Andy's Man Club - a safe place to talk to other men at weekly meet ups, who might be struggling.

There are of course many more organisations who can help if you're struggling with mental health issues. There is a list here:

Mind.org