Dr. Samuel Johnson, in the later years of his life, decided to learn Dutch, to keep his mind active. Friends and contempories critisized him for spending time on such an easy language. In the past few months dutch songs have come into my path and I can hear the oral tradition blowing across the north sea from our shared words and dialects. To say the Dutch language is easy is bemusing..sometimes it is, sometime it isn't. The Dutch will tell you its one of  the hardest languages in the world to learn..and half of the time you just have to agree with them! The songs of Stef Bos are beautiful and profoundly insightful and so is the vast catalogue of recordings by Boudewijn De Groot. Translating these songs and then trying to sing them has been a lot of fun and made me realise how speaking one of the world's major languages as a mother tongue doesn't do us any favours. The dutch won't let me practice, they answer me in english. Poetry and songs in other languages can never be really translated. One of the great things for me during this  dutch experience is to discover the songs of De Groot's lyric writer Lennart Nigh, sadly no longer with us, a wonderful wonderful poet/songsmith.

I may never alas speak Dutch, but like the Norman language that left us so much vocabulary, so did the Saxons. English is this beautiful hybrid between the two, held together by some indigenous ancient British. I'm rattling on about this because I think language is the very thing I find to be living history...something in constant motion..its becoming quite an obsession. I'm sure I can hear Danish when I'm travelling on a Yorkshire bus.

On the new CD, 'Flying an Unknown Flag' I recorded a song I scribbled down during a walk by the sea in Lincolnshire. 'Further' is an optimistic song of the future but starts very much in the past and starts off by speaking of language and history. Unfortunately the song has been refered to as being about 'Englishness' because of this opening verse. '  I love these small towns with Danish place names' Part of me wishes I'd been clearer, while the other half of me wants to  leave the poetry hanging just where it is...yeah, I'll leave it just where it is.  'Englishness', like any national identity, is something I'm very wary of. I like to think we are outgrowing it. There are, I know, sub-divisions of meaning here, Nationalism and culturism are sometimes used to mean the same things. I prefer the latter. I'm uncomfortable with 'Nationalism' because I'm into a global understanding that's still in its fledgling years and find the 'national identity thing archaic and dangerous. 'Further' is about where we are going and making it better through our contribution for us all...and thats a world perspective.

Of course,  songs are always open to intepretation, as during the writing of the CD, I was listening to a lot of American writers, like David Olney and Richard Shindell. I like the space and poetry in the american tradition of songwriters. It never translated well onto the UK folk scene so it became 'Americana'. I rode my bike down to The Musician in Leicester today and looked at the line-up of great American writers..it was an honour to be amongst them all in the listings.
 
I think I write songs to keep something inside me active when I sometimes feel I'm surrounded by so much that doesn't want it to be. Thats enough double Dutch for today!
Peace,
 
Pete Morton.