Y Bandana – “Llafn y Llif” (The Sawing Blade).

Hi people! 🙂 

 

For today I picked another song by Y Bandana – the Welsh pop rock band formed by brothers Siôn and Tomos Owens, their cousin Gwilym Bowen Rhys and his friend Robin Llwyd Jones, which disbanded in 2016. – It comes from their sophomore album, Bywyd Gwyn. I actually did a translation of this song, but was unsure of too many things and whether I got them right, so am not going to share it. But I can say that, as far as I can tell, this song describes the way one feels, mentally and physically the morning after a wild night of drinking or other partying. There’s quite a lot of interesting and vivid descriptions there, but the one from which the song takes its title is how the lyrical subject feels that the sawing blade is sawing into his head, which hurts to even imagine! I can kinda sorta relate, because while I don’t drink alcohol at all anymore, I get migraines, and waking up with one can sometimes have a fair bit in common with having a hangover, I think. 😀 

 

Question of the day.

What was your fifteen minutes of fame? 

 

My answer: 

 

For me, I guess I could consider that to be when I was in a radio programme for children. I think I was six years old if I remember correctly and it happened because of my honorary aunt. She was a real estate agent and my Mum met her when she was looking for a place to possibly move into for some time during the year so she could be closer to my school, which didn’t happen in the end. But when she phoned the hundredth agent that day and told her about our situation, she said unfortunately she couldn’t help us, but that she lived really close to the school so she could be like my aunt and visit me at school and stuff so that I had someone there. We took her generous offer, and she indeed did that, and I visited her at her home on many weekends and enjoyed it a whole lot. I believe I’d already written about her in the context of how I first tried couscous, and that she introduced me to lots of sophisticated food that my family normally didn’t have a habit to eat at home. She also happened to share my passion for glass and porcelain figurines, and generally beautiful figurines and we exchanged some, and she even bought me a few. She would also often come when I sang at a school contest or anything similar, despite it was quite risky apparently, as I guess she was ill with something that affected her immune system so she caught bugs from people very easily and was very often more or less ill. Sadly later when I was in primary school she moved with her daughter to the city, we sometimes talked on the phone and I remember that she got more ill there and also her granddaughters had what sounded to me like some serious health issues, but eventually we lost touch altogether. My Mum and I tried to find her years later and find out where she might live now, but unsuccessfully.

 

And one other thing she did for me was she got me a place on that radio programme, because at the time I was really into all things radio, and she happened to know someone who worked in one Catholic radio station where they had a programme for kids on Sundays. That station doesn’t exist anymore, or it sort of does but under a different name and has a rather different profile though it’s still sort of Christian. And of course I was really excited about it. My Mum came and my honorary uncle drove us both there. But honestly I don’t even remember much about the programme itself anymore, and would probably remember even less if not for the fact that my aunt recorded it on a tape so I think my Mum might still have it. I guess I sang something there and just talked about Bibiel stuff. I can vaguely recall that part of the actual programme was about some biscuit recipe and then the lady who presented that programme asked the kids who were listening to call and say if they had recently made some food and some girl called and won a board game. Also I remember that the presenter lady told me that my Mum and uncle were sitting behind glass in the control room or whatever it’s called in English, and for whatever reason that made me freak out a bit and the whole time the programme lasted I was thinking about how they’re watching me, as if that was a big deal or something scary, even though I knew in advance that they would and I was very happy with it. 😀 But yeah, overall it was a lot of fun and I was over the moon to have that experience. It was only a local station broadcasting for Warsaw and the surrounding areas but for my family it was a big deal. 

 

Also another situation because of which my family used to say that I was “famous” was because there was a film about my preschool, I think that was a year before that radio thing and there’s quite a bit of me in that film, and some people I know who watched it still laugh at some weird or funny things that I said in there haha. Like when we were saying what we want to be when we grow up and most girls wanted to be mums, and Bibiel shared her new-found knowledge saying: “I won’t have a baby, because when women want to, they have a baby, and when they don’t, they don’t.” I’d seriously thought that it was less simple than that so it was a revelation to me when I figured that out. It was basically just a documentary about the preschool and how blind children live and what their early education/perception of the world looks like. I suppose for uninvolved people it’s meant to be inspirational or whatever, but my Mum and I find it quite depressing, whereas my Dad finds it pleasantly nostalgic so he actually still watches it when he has nothing better to do. 

 

How about you? What has brought you a bit of fame in life? 🙂 

 

Blankiflur – “Sjá þig” & “Love You”.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

For today I have a song in Icelandic! Quite a rare thing on this blog. Blankiflur, which is the Icelandic/Old Norse version of the name Blanchefleur, is the stage name of Inga Birna Friðjónsdóttir. I – probably like a lot of other people from outside of Iceland who know about her – have first heard about her because of the Icelandic TV music competition called Söngvakeppnin, which she took part in this year. Söngvakeppnin determines who will represent Iceland at Eurovision each year. Blankiflur didn’t make it to the final, which I think is a bit of a bummer because in my humble opinion her song was better than the one which actually won, but nonetheless, I’m sure it must have introduced Blankiflur and her music to a wider audience. I am sharing this same song that she sang in Söngvakeppnin, both the Icelandic and English version. 

 

Sjá þig: 

 

 

Love you: 

 

Triona Marshall – “The Marquis of Huntley’s Old Snuff Mill”.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

For today I chose a traditional tune, originally coming from Scotland. Triona Marshall who plays it is an Irish harpist hailing from Port Laoise. Aside from being a solo harpist, she has also performed with The Chieftains. 

 

Question of the day.

What’s the worst case of computer illiteracy you’ve ever seen? 

 

My answer: 

 

Being just moderately tech savvy myself (which for non-tech savvy sighted people in practice often means very tech savvy, because as I often say, if you’re blind and want to use technology even for fairly basic stuff, you often have to get a somewhat better grip on it than an average sighted person, even if you don’t want to do anything beyond average like programming or whatever actually tech savvy people do), I’ve seen my fair share of computer illiteracy, even within my own family. My Dad is particularly bad with technology. He doesn’t feel bad about it at all though, he has no reason to want to get good at it and I totally get it. He does need to do some things that involve the use of a computer as part of his job, but when I started to work for him, that became my field, so I wrote emails on his behalf to clients or truck dispatchers, printed out the paperwork he had to do. Theoretically I was supposed to also handle his bank transfers, in fact I suppose that was the main point of my job officially lol, but very wisely he didn’t let that happen and instead I made him coffee, while my Mum did the banking part voluntarily, until he decided he feels safest dealing with something as important as money himself. And even though he officially fired me last year, it’s become a routine for both of us that I do all the tech stuff for him unless I can’t do something ‘cause it’s inaccessible or something. But still, he uses a computer leisurely as well, and makes those bank transfers on it, or looks up Marine Traffic so he can try to predict when there will be something for him to do and when he can relax a bit, as he likes things to be predictable but his job isn’t really. So sometimes it’s quite hilarious for me to observe how much he struggles using a computer and making sense of things. It seems all really confusing for him.

 

For one thing, he types with just one finger which is super slow and he makes typos all the time. It took me a lot of time to learn to touch type properly so I get it, and obviously he has no need to learn to touch type, but from my current perspective, it’s funny, and it’s funny even to Sofi who doesn’t touch type but still types very fast. 

 

He’s also quite suspicious and almost paranoid by nature, which also extends to online privacy. He is absolutely convinced that it’s like opening yourself to evil when you register/log in somewhere, and they have access to all of your data, including probably your innermost thoughts that you think right before sleep. He never listens when we tell them that, actually, there are situations, sometimes, when it’s quite a bit safer when you log in vs just being a guest without a password. So he doesn’t log in anywhere. Unless he is already logged in but doesn’t know about it, like for example he uses YouTube on his laptop unknowingly from my Mum’s Google account, and then thinks that they show him TradCath stuff because they track where he goes, including our church, and think he must be interested in TradCath content (he’s not really unless it’s apocalyptical and blood pressure-raising, but Mum is). On his phone it appears that Google have somehow persuaded him unknowingly to create an account and he’s not aware that he has one, which he’s logged in to on YouTube and Google Maps (he loves travelling around the world on Google Maps, which is one tech thing that I can’t really do effectively but he can, so if I’m interested in some place we “drive” there together and he’ll describe it for me, and feel great about himself, as will I for making him feel this way). He has more email accounts than Olek and I together, which various people have helped him create, but doesn’t use any of them and doesn’t remember the passwords to them. He’ll write it on a piece of paper, not writing the email address that it’s associated with or anything, then put the piece of paper in a sea of other papers in his desk drawer, including other pieces of papers with random passwords, and be like: “Bibiel what’s my password?” How would I know such intimate details of his life? So then he’s mad at the whole world. On the other hand though, he grumbles at people on online selling platforms (like our equivalent of Ebay), that they don’t always publicly share their phone numbers. What about THEIR privacy?! 

 

Still, despite my Dad providing all of his children with near-daily entertainment of his computer illiteracy, the ultimate thing I’ve heard of, and that still makes me laugh after over a decade since hearing about it, is what Olek once told me about his friend’s mum. She wanted to ground him from the Internet ‘cause he was playing games all the time, but she didn’t know how to do it, but then suddenly had a lightbulb moment when she saw the “Internet Explorer” icon and clicked delete. “See?! I removed the internet! Now you can’t play those stupid games!” But obviously she just deleted the shortcut to Internet Explorer from the desktop, not even the app itself! We were both in fits of laughter when Olek told that to me. Even if she did uninstall Internet Explorer, I guess no one cool used it by then, except some blind people as it was very accessible with screen readers, so he still had Chrome or whatever else he actually used. But, cleverly, he didn’t let his mum know that she didn’t quite do what she thought she did, and pretended to be all angry and frustrated. 😀 I wonder if she ever found out. 

 

Oh and speaking of the internet, just now I remembered that my gran thinks it’s called “eternit” (which is the Polish term for building materials made of asbestos and cement, no idea what it’s called in English), which is a source of great amusement for everyone on my Dad’s side of the family. Even my Dad knows it’s internet, not “eternit”. 

 

Your turn. What’s the absolute worst you’ve witnessed, or heard of? 🙂 

 

Casi & the Blind Harpist – “Another Lover”.

Hi people! 🙂 

 

Yesterday I promised to feature another song by Casi & The Blind Harpist today, and here it is. Such a beautiful song, very interesting musically and mature lyrically! 

 

Question of the day.

What is something you will always say no to? 

 

My answer: 

 

I like to think that I’m reasonably open-minded but actually a LOT of things. Basically any kind of socialising which I do not feel obliged to take part in (like an important extended family social occasion or something) and in which there is totally nothing for me other than just the socialising itself, especially if it’s a large group of people or people I don’t know. But even if it is something that I do feel obliged to take part in, or something that I could at least theoretically gain something from, sometimes I’ll still say no if I’m too drained or it feels way beyond my capacity. 

 

Anything like bungee jumping, sky diving, basically anything that makes me feel gravitationally insecure, I’ve never even flown on a plane because the idea feels massively scary, although who knows, maybe I’ll have to face it some day as those can sometimes be hard to avoid. 

 

Cigarettes, I think I already wrote a post on that and why, let me find it… oh yeah, here it is, should you be interested. Same about drugs, at least hard ones for sure, and these days alcohol practically too as it makes me feel awful.

 

Speaking of substances, coffee in social situations or whenever I’m stressed. – This is hard, because I love love LOVE me my strong, black coffee as many of you will know, but, as I’d written on my blog at the time when I’d made that discovery, I can’t really have it anymore because suddenly something appears to have switched in my brain at some point and it makes me super jittery and anxious and I feel like Misha – only able to go under a blanket and shake – except unlike Misha I can’t even fall asleep. I used to tolerate coffee really well and just totally couldn’t understand people who had a problem drinking coffee past certain hour, it never affected me much. But, well, things have changed, and then it also took quite a while for me and required someone else to point it out to reach the conclusion that it’s the coffee doing this to me and either I quit it or it probably won’t get better. Surprisingly, despite my love for coffee and heavy reliance on it in booting my brain in the mornings, I guess I wasn’t quite an addict on a physical level as I was worried I must’ve been because, on a purely physical level, I had no problem quitting it cold turkey. But I still miss the taste of coffee like a freak, and it’s been a couple years since our breakup. It’s probably because my parents are coffee drinkers too so every morning the sound of the coffee grinder cruelly invades my subconscious, ‘cause usually my conscious brain isn’t quite on yet. And every Sunday after church I hear people happily making plans for having coffee soon, and then blissfully and mercilessly slurping it (though that last bit is mostly just one peep’s domain 😀 People as stylish as my Mum never slurp.) Good thing at least that I can’t smell. 

 

Decaf is sacrilegious. Green tea – I can drink it but don’t really like it much at all. – I love cocoa so if I really miss my coffee I’ll have a mug of very strong cocoa and play pretend that it’s coffee, but as good as it is, it’s just not. Clearly it’s not if it doesn’t make me feel the slightest bit anxious even though supposedly it has some caffeine. Or I’ll pop a Kopiko candy if I happen to have those. I will also never say no to properly-made, creamy iced coffee, as that’s more like a dessert or something than actual coffee so it doesn’t affect me negatively either. But sometimes, just sometimes, when I’m having a chill day and nothing much to deal with, I’ll have that cup of coffee. Of course, I’ll always regret it later and wonder what the flip I was thinking, but at least I can deal with the consequences of my whim privately and discretely. So that’s why I always say no to coffee in social situations or when I’m away from home. 

 

Hm, what else…? Piercings! I feel like I’ve mentioned that one already but not sure. But yeah, one thing is I see no reason to want to have them, even something as basic as having my ears pierced (I actually used to love clip-on earrings very much and had a large collection of them, which was no easy feat as it’s hard to get tasteful and fun-looking clip-on earrings, I still do have them, but now somehow I just don’t care anymore or maybe it’s just that I have nowhere to wear them haha). Maybe I wouldn’t be so “no” about it if not for my grandma, who, for whatever reason, kept nagging me when I was younger that I should get my ears pierced, just because Mum and Sofi do, and THREE flipping years in a row I got earrings from her as a birthday present. I really don’t like people telling me like that what I should do, I’m gonna do exactly the opposite if you harass me like that, and with no sound reason for it other than just because you want. Why would I want to do everything that Mum and Sofi do? She seemed to think, for some reason, that it’s the pain I’m scared of, or something, even though I told her that it’s not the case. So, I will always say no to piercings (for myself, I totally don’t mind if other people want to get them), just because. I think theoretically I’d be more inclined to get a tattoo, but I’m not going to do that either, firstly because it goes against my religious beliefs, and secondly because, while it used to be a kind of quirky thing, nowadays it nearly feels like it’s rarer or weirder not to have one, and I’ve no idea what I could even get… A sleeping Misha…? 😀 Endless cringe! 

 

Oh, one more thing that popped into my brain, that might seem particularly glaring considering that, as I said, I like to think I’m open-minded. I will always say no to going to museums. Well, at least almost always; maybe there are some that would actually work for me in that I’d find them interesting and simultaneously they’d be accessible enough that I could actually get something out of it, but generally, I’m quite prejudiced against museums. I kind of wish I were not, but oh well. While these days there is an increasing number of museums that have introduced at least some level of accessibility for the blind, in my, obviously very personal, experience, visiting museums is just deadly boring. Those I’ve been to on school trips as a kid that had accessible exhibitions or something were just not my thing, and the ones I happened to visit my family were an exercise in patience for me at best, and a total waste of time and lack of brain stimulation at worst. Worse still, when you go from one exhibit to another while people take their time to look at it, perhaps there’s a guide who talks about it etc. that’s a whole lot of standing in one place, which is even worse when it’s summer, and it usually is when you go on a trip. And my system doesn’t do standing in one place for prolonged periods when it’s hot, so I start feeling faint quite quickly, and then I feel guilty for spoiling everyone else’s experience and causing drama. Thankfully, except for my Dad, no one in my family is particularly into museums either, especially not Sofi, so they  don’t do that anymore, and even when they do, I’m not a kid anymore so am not expected to go along. 

 

Well, I guess that’s enough. Sorry if this post maybe lacks coherence or something. It looks like I jinxed it a couple days ago bragging about how well I’d been sleeping ‘cause last night I got no sleep so now I’m having a zombie day (which is how I always call the day after a night of no sleep). I don’t mind it overly (at least it means that, provided I get good sleep tonight and not too much of it, my brain clock will reset and be back on track again, which feels great), but the thing is, when I’m having a zombie day it feels like I’m not making sense when writing in other languages and like my writing is totally unhinged. I guess I do ‘cause no one has actually told me that I don’t, but that’s just how it feels to me. Zombie days are great for wild out of the box thinking, making conclusions with your intuition only and not questioning them, imagining stuff, feeling dizzy all the time, wearing layers of clothes and still being cold, having cool deja vus, making weird discoveries or wallowing in your grossest feelings; but not so much serious and ambitious intellectual pursuits like blogging. But I guess it’s my effort that matters in the end. It can’t be complete gibberish. So if my writing today feels off to you, too, now you know why. 🙂 

 

Anyways, how about you? What things are just a total no to you and always will be? 🙂 

 

Casi & The Blind Harpist – “One Evening In April”.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

Although I’d already featured two (or four, as they are in both a Welsh and an English version) songs by Casi in the past years – Dyffryn/Rooted and Nefolion, I would really like to share something else by her now. And while, strictly speaking, over here it’s still more like an afternoon in April, I think this beautiful, cinematic-sounding song feels very appropriate all round. It comes from her EP Sunflower Seeds. For those unfamiliar with Casi and her work, she is a singer, songwriter and poet hailing from the Bangor area in North Wales, in the Eryri/Snowdonia mountains. I absolutely love her music and find it appealing on so many different levels but also just plain fascinating, it really resonates with me in an oddly powerful way. It’s so intense, dark, and “hiraethful”. 

 

I can already say that tomorrow I’m going to share one more song by her. 🙂 

 

Question of the day.

Which artificial flavour tastes the least like its real food counterpart? 

 

My answer: 

 

In my opinion, it’s totally strawberry-flavoured things. I absolutely love strawberries, but basically anything artificial that is strawberry-flavoured is meh at best to me and not much like strawberries. Both of my siblings, who I guess love strawberries even more than I do, actually like strawberry-flavoured things a lot too. Oh and cherry-flavoured stuff is usually yuck! I like cherries, don’t love maybe but certainly don’t mind them, but anything cherry-flavoured (perhaps except for cherry jam, totally sucks). Also peach-flavoured, I used to love a lot of peach-flavoured things as a kid and there still are some that I do, but for the most part now I think they don’t taste much like actual peaches. 

 

Do you have any flavours that you feel this way about? 🙂 

 

Question of the day.

Who’s the first person you think of when you’re desperate? 

 

My answer: 

 

In most situations it’s my Mum, as she’s the one who helps me with most things, be them very practical things or social things, for example. All things peopling is probably the domain where I most often feel desperate, either because I know that a certain situation just totally isn’t something I can handle, or because I don’t know what to do, or whether what I want to do is the right thing. So my Mum is like my proxy in a lot of social situations, but also the person I usually turn to when feeling totally clueless socially, as she’s very good at those things. 

 

How is it with you? 🙂 

Llio Rhydderch, Tomos Williams & Mark O’Connor – “Seren Syw” (Beautiful Star).

Hi hi people! 🙂 

 

Today’s song is a very interesting arrangement of an old, Welsh love song, for the triple harp, trumpet and drums, coming from Llio Rhydderch’s album Carn Ingli. Definitely not the first time I’m sharing something from it. This tune has been performed by so many different artists in so many different styles that I’m quite surprised that I still haven’t shared any version of it before, or maybe I just don’t recall it. It is more widely known as Cariad Cyntaf (First Love) and the words to it are from the perspective of a young man who is in love, which presumably is unrequited or somehow otherwise complicated. 

 

What is it like being Bibiel today?

I haven’t written a journal-prompt based post in a few months, so I thought I’d do one today. Since we haven’t had a question of the day in a while either, I chose a short and simple prompt. You may feel free to treat it as a question of the day and answer it in the comments. You don’t have to read the whole post if you’d rather just answer the question, it might get a bit rambly and perhaps not the most interesting/relatable/digestible. 

 

The following prompt comes from Hannah Braime’s book of journalling prompts – The Year of You: 

 

What is it like being you today? 

 

As someone fascinated by people, mostly on an individual rather than a collective level as the so-called “humanity”, I find this an intriguing question, and one that I often feel tempted to ask others, not just “today” but in general. It’s fascinating to think about what it might be like to be someone else, and how different or similar that might be to our own experience. And we’ll never really know for sure! Nor will we ever be able to describe it well to others what it’s like to be us because we don’t know what it’s like being anyone else. Consequently we have no idea what exactly is the difference between being e.g. me Bibiel vs a random Jack Smith. I guess that is why some people say that we’re all lonely and always will be. Each of us is just basically imprisoned in their own brain. And it’s not like I have a problem with that or seriously want it to be different. I think I’d much rather be perpetually lonely and have my brain privacy than if we had one, collective brain or something. That would be so boring. 

 

I guess I find it all the more interesting because the longer I live, the more starkly I realise how much of an alien I actually am. So many experiences I’ve had, or have regularly, that I used to think are normal and must be everyone’s reality, are gradually turning out not to be. Go figure. Yet at the same time, strangely enough, I’m still a human nonetheless, so some of my experiences are bound to be similar to those of my fellow human beings. That can be really confusing sometimes, to figure out which ones may be and which may not, and, when speaking with other people, not sound either like an absolute freak who’s just arrived in the human world from Bibielland, or, on the other hand, a snowflake who thinks her whole existence is somehow inherently exceptional. So what better way to find some balance than learn about what it’s like to be other people. Whenever I’m forced to deal with some peopling, especially if it’s longer than my brain can handle and in a larger group of people, think an extended family gathering or sitting at the hairdresser’s or something, something I really enjoy doing to kill the time and keep my brain occupied is analysing people. I like to observe their external behaviours and what they’re saying, and imagine how that compares to what it’s like for them on the inside. Perhaps all they’re doing on the outside is some sort of mask or game and they’re really very different? What if they’re just as bored sitting here as I am, but just happen to be better at faking it so put on their best show and always act like the life of the party and seem to be enjoying themselves very much. And this guy who’s sitting at the end of the table and I’d suspect he’s mentally asleep because he hardly says anything and when he does it doesn’t sound very intelligent – maybe he’s got a Brainworld too, like I do, and has no qualms getting wholly engrossed in it publicly and zoning out? Or maybe he stayed up late because he was doing something actually interesting so that’s why now he is irresistibly sleepy? Or maybe his conscience was keeping him awake because he did something atrocious but no one knows? That constantly whimpering baby, what if she’s feeling very unwell but her mum doesn’t realise? What if this baby will develop a trauma over that but will not have a conscious memory of it once she grows up so won’t be able to get over it?… Usually the stories I tell myself about people around me are more interesting/dramatic than their subjects are in reality, but I find the diversity in people’s characters and internal experiences fascinating nonetheless, even if I find them completely unrelatable on a more personal level. 

 

But anyway, I was supposed to tell you what it’s like being Bibiel, not go into some freaky pseudosociological discourses. Most normal people would probably just see this question as a more engaging way of asking “How are you?” (Which is totally fine btw), but I guess my subconscious doesn’t like it when things are too simple. So let me try to answer it again. 

 

Well, currently, it feels very decent being Bibiel! I seriously cannot complain. Some of you might already know or suspect why, right? The Peak!… The faza peak! As I wrote earlier this month, this past February I got a faza on Griff Lynch. Plus, my faza on Gwilym still hasn’t faded! I so hope it won’t anytime soon! So things have been very interesting, I had no idea I could have two dominant fazas at once, and who would have thought that I’d get yet another faza on someone who is Welsh, though it’s definitely helping my Welsh skills. I felt ambivalent about this faza at first because it all happened in a very weird way and, with my faza on Gwil still doing very well, I didn’t feel like I needed a new one at all. And I still have some reasons to feel a bit apprehensive about the whole thing. But at the same time it’s been a really fun ride, the faza in general, and the peak, as those initial peaks at the beginning of a new major faza are always bliss. I love how creative, energised and happy this Griff peak is making me feel. Though at the same time it’s a relatively gentle peak, when you compare it to the one I had on Cornelis ten years ago. Since this has started in February, I feel like for the last week or so it’s been very slowly going down, but it’s still a very definite peak and I suppose it’ll be a while until this faza stops peaking and becomes more of a steady thing. I wish I could just always have a peak, but I realise I’m exceptionally lucky that I have something like peaks at all. 

 

Consequently, these days Bibielz are usually soaring somewhere just above the baseline mood-wise (for those who don’t know I have dysthymia/persistent depressive disorder aka a kind of depression that is milder but sticks to your brain with a hell of a lot more determination than major depressive disorder, so my baseline is lower than most) and have more energy and brainergy than usual, and lots of interesting and fun ideas. I’ve had an odd AVPD “flare-up” here and there during this peak but they haven’t been very long or spectacular. This peak, as peaks tend to do, has turned my whole sleep-wake cycle upside down, which is something quite normal for me in general that anything major going on will make my sleep cycle and need for sleep shift, my circadian clock just easily goes out of kilter since I have no light perception so my brain finds it hard to remember what time zone I actually live in. For a week or so I basically slept 2-3 hours a night, but since I have so much energy, I didn’t even really feel it. I’m quite glad though that my sleep appears to be gradually going back to a more normal schedule and amount. 

 

Currently, Misha is here with me which I’m really happy about, as the last few weeks he’d been spending very little time in my room and hid a lot, but recently, for whatever reason, he’s very sleepy during the day and basically sleeps through almost all days in my bed, and then comes back for the night unusually early for his standards. Actually, perhaps that’s why my sleep is going back to normal now, because when Misha comes here at night, he won’t go to bed if I won’t go with him, so he basically has been playing daddy with me and telling me when it’s bedtime, and I have no real choice but to obey, haha. So today it’s very Mishful to be Bibiel. 

 

Other than that though, there hasn’t been a whole lot going on in the Bibiel world. Thus, as you can see, dear reader, my existence lately has been rather monothematic, which might not be all that exciting to read about. 😀 

 

So how about you, lovely people? What is it like to be you today? Or any other day, for that matter? How would you describe it? How’s your life been lately? And, do you also enjoy imagining what it must be like being other people, or would you rather focus on the actually important things in life? Do you ever feel like it’s very different being you than what it must feel like for others to be themselves? 🙂 

Anne Crosby Gaudet – “Ocean Stones”.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

For today, I have a solo harp piece for you, composed and played by Anne Crosby Gaudet – the Canadian harpist and harp teacher who composes her music specifically with harp learners in mind. Like a lot of her other compositions, this piece is lovely and relaxing, and inspired by nature. 

 

Julie Feeney – “Julia”.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

For today I picked a song by one incredibly versatile and original Irish artist. She is a classically trained composer, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer hailing from Galway, and she composes, arranges, orchestrates and produces all of her music, playing most of the instruments. Which is something I really like, and I’ve already said it many times on here how much I love and appreciate listening to music which someone has made all or mostly by themselves, because it feels so genuine, consistent and authentic, and can give you a good idea of the workings of the mind behind it all, and human minds are so interesting.

 

I don’t even remember anymore how it happened that I first came across Julie Feeney but it was quite early on in my exploration of Irish music, when I was still mostly into traditional Irish folk and not much else Irish. Which makes me think it must have happened via Anúna – an Irish choral ensemble – with whom she used to sing. And while Clocks – the album from which the song Julia comes from – has been her last album to date, which came out in 2012, it was her first album that I heard, and I think if I were forced to choose my favourite album by her, it would be this one.

 

Clocks is loosely themed around Julie’s extended family and her Galway roots, and this song is a tribute to her grandmother – Julia. – It is written from the perspective of Julie’s grandfather, about whom she has said that, after his wife’s passing, he stopped singing because he no longer had anything to sing about. I’ve always found this song strangely captivating. 

 

Jen Jeniro – “Dolphin Pinc a Melyn” (Pink and Yellow Dolphin).

Hey people! 🙂 

 

Another Welsh-language song for today. It comes from a band that no longer exists, but is a relatively new discovery to me. One of the members of this group, as well as quite a few other bands with a similar, psychedelic rock sound, was Dafydd Owain. I have been familiar with one of them – Omaloma – for years, and since I really like their music, I featured one of their most popular songs – Aros o Gwmpas – in the past, but it was only Plu’s latest album, Tri, which features Dafydd Owain on the electric guitar and bass, that brought his other musical endeavours, including Jen Jeniro, to my attention. Aside from the aforementioned bands, he had also been a member of Palenco (together with Llŷr Pari, also from Omaloma and Jen Jeniro) and Eitha Tal Ffranco, and last year released a great solo album called Uwch Dros y Pysgod, with Elan from Plu on backing vocals . 

 

Dolphin Pinc a Melyn is Jen Jeniro’s 2010 single, and as far as I’m aware it is/was one of their more popular songs. 

 

Carcharorion – “Si Hei Lw” & Siân James – “Si Hei Lwli”.

Hey people! 🙂 

 

Today, I picked a song from an interesting electronic music project from Wales that I discovered just last week. I had once heard their remix of Hiraeth by Plu,on Radio Cymru, but it’s only recently that I got to explore their music more closely. One half of Carcharorion (the other being Huw Cadwaladr) is Gruff Pritchard, who is probably best known in the Welsh-language music world for being a member of Yr Ods. The name might sound familiar even to those of you not deeply into Welsh music scene, if you read one of my recent posts in which I wrote about my latest major faza on Griff Lynch,, the frontman of Yr Ods. Besides being bandmates, Gruff and Griff run a record label called Lwcus T. While exploring music released via Lwcus T, I came across Moddion – Gruff Pritchard’s solo project – and his captivating debut EP from last year. I really enjoyed it, came away with an “I-want-more-of-this” feeling and have listened to it several more times since. I’ll definitely feature Moddion in my song of the day series as well at some point, and hope we’ll hear more music from him soon. After that, I discovered Carcharorion, whose music is distinct from Moddion and Yr Ods. It occupies a different region of the electronic music spectrum, but is no less interesting. 

 

Carcharorion means prisoners in Welsh (I like how dark, intimidating and evocative this word feels, sounding like some sort of ancient curse 😀 ). They used to be known as Carcharorion Riddim, likely inspired by a Geraint Jarman song of the same name. Besides their original tracks, they remix other Welsh artists’ songs. 

 

This one samples a beautiful traditional lullaby called Si Hei Lwli, sung by Siân James. I am an absolute sucker for clever and tasteful combinations of folk and electronics, as well as for lullabies, so I totally fell in love with it! A fun fact: there’s even a slight Polish connection to this song. The speech synth saying “Carcharorion Riddim” the English way at the beginning, is a voice called Brian, originally produced by a Polish company Ivona Software, now part of Amazon. Another of Carcharorion’s songs uses Ivona’s Welsh voice Gwyneth. I would know things like that, being Polish and blind, lol. 

 

Siân James has been frequently featured on my blog, but not Si Hei Lwli, so I thought I’d share her original version too. It’s a very simple song so I was able to translate it for those of you who don’t speak Welsh. The phrase “si hei lwli” doesn’t really mean anything, it’s a kind of nonsensical vocalisation as is common with lullabies all over the world, it’s pronounced “See hi loo-lee” as you’ll be able to hear. 

 

Si hei lwli, my baby 

The ship is going away 

Si hei lwli, my baby 

The captain is on board 

Si hei lwli lwli lws

Sleep, sleep, my pretty baby 

Si hei lwli, my baby 

The ship is going away 

Si hei lwli, my baby

The eastern wind blows 

Si hei lwli, my baby

The seagull’s in its nest 

Si hei lwli lwli lws

Sleep, sleep, my pretty baby 

Si hei lwli, my baby

The eastern wind blows 

 

Carcharorion: 

 

 

Siân James: 

 

Maire Brennan – “Na Paístí (The Children)”.

And finally for today I chose this really beautiful-sounding Irish-language song by Maire Brennan. As you may know, Maire is Catholic and quite open about her faith, and a lot of her songs are more or less strongly Christian-themed. This one is, as you’ll probably be able to guess for yourselves, inspired by the passage of Scripture where Jesus blesses children and says that we should be like children. Here is the translation after Celtic Lyrics Corner. 

 

He said let the children come to me

For the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these

He told us to be true like little children

For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these

 

He took the children in His arms and hugged them

Put His hands on them and blessed them

It doesn’t seem to be available on YouTube, so below is the Spotify link, and you can find it on other streaming services via SongWhip. 

 

Song of the day (4th April) – Agnes Obel – “Familiar”.

For yesterday’s overdue song, I picked this one from Agnes Obel’s 2016 album Citizen of Glass. I used to listen to this Berlin-based Danish artist quite a lot back when I was in high school, which was exactly around the time when that album came out, it also got a bit of attention from some of our Polish media. And a good few of my most favourite songs in her discography come from this album. Then I kind of forgot about it for a few years, until something reminded me of this particular song recently so that it’s been on my mind a lot, and I have revisited the album a few times since then. I think I now like it even more than I used to, and Familiar now feels particularly special to me. I love how cinematic this whole album sounds. Of course Agnes Obel’s music generally has such a Gothic feel to it, I’ve always perceived it as almost stereotypically Scandinavian in a way, which I find very appealing. But I think Citizen of Glass takes it to a new level, it’s almost creepy in places but very excitingly, beautifully creepy. I read that she said she wanted the songs on this album to be glass-like, which I think is the perfect word to describe them, and as someone who has always loved glass things, I think that might be why I love it. 😀 This particular song appears to have gained popularity after having been used in the Netflix thriller Dark. 

 

Song of the day (3rd April) – Yr Eira – “Pob Nos” (Every Night”.

Hiya people! 🙂 

 

The last time I wrote, I shared a song by Griff Lynch, and mentioned that both of his siblings are also musicians. While I’ve already shared something by Yr Eira – the indie rock band fronted by Lewys Wyn, Griff’s little brother – back in my blog’s early days, I thought I’d like to share more of their music. It  was really long ago, and they are really good. Oh, and by the way, in the post featuring Griff’s song I mentioned that I’d shared a few songs by Yr Eira. However, when I checked, to my surprise, it seems like it was only one song called Suddo, you can check it out here if you’d like. 

 

Yr Eira (which means the snow in English) formed in North Wales. Aside from the aforementioned Lewys Wyn on vocals and guitar, the group also consists of bassist Trystan Thomas, drummer Guto Howells and guitarist Ifan Davies. Ifan Davies is probably better known in the Welsh-language music scene as the frontman of another very popular indie band called Swnami. I have featured several of Swnami’s songs in my Song of the Day series as well.

 

I picked one of the singles from Yr Eira’s second and most recent full-length album Map Meddwl (Mind Map), which came out in 2020. The song was co-written by Lewys Wyn and his long-time friend and housemate and fellow musician Gwyn Rosser, who is the lead vocalist in the band Los Blancos. We can also hear him in this track. As Lewys has said himself, it’s a song celebrating their friendship and bromance over the years. I think it’s a really cool song. I wanted to do a translation of it for you and even wrote one. However, as you guys know, I’m merely a Welsh learner. So, in the end, I decided not to share it because I had doubts about quite a few bits and whether I got them right. So, you’ll have to do without one, I’m afraid. 😀 

 

The video for this song was directed by Griff Lynch. 

 

Griff Lynch – “Yr Enfys” (The Rainbow).

Hey all you people! 🙂 

 

So, I’ve got some big news for you… This past February, I got a new faza! I totally didn’t see it coming. The funny thing is, I’ve actually been familiar with some of my new faza subject’s music for years, albeit on a rather superficial level. Yet, the faza happened only now, and so unexpectedly. As you may guess from the title of this post, my new faza peep is Griff Lynch. If the name sounds familiar and you’re not that into Welsh music, it might be because I wrote a song of the day post featuring a song by his band – Yr Ods – over a month ago. They’re those people about whom I was so relieved to discover they’re not originally from Cardiff. 😀 Anyway, I seriously wonder how many fazas on Welsh people I’ll have in my whole life, haha. I think it’s interesting though that Griff is my first major faza peep who is not folky at all. I realised I had the faza on him not long after writing that post about Yr Ods. I’m still in the grip of the initial faza peak, which obviously feels great. Another funny, and weird, thing about this faza, is that, as you might know, my previous major faza peep before Griff was Gwilym Bowen Rhys. In the past, my fazas worked in a way where the previous one had to fade into the background for the new one to replace it. However, Gwilym hasn’t faded yet, which I’m really happy about. So, I’m basically having two major dominant fazas at once! Wild! I didn’t know my brain could handle two fazas at once without exploding or something. 

 

While I have known Yr Ods’ music for a long time, because they have been very successful on the Welsh-language music scene and released songs that are modern classics in Wales, I had no idea Griff has also made quite a few solo singles. Like Yr Ods’ music, his solo work is pop, very much electronic, easily accessible at first glance yet ambitious and quirky. Often, it deals with dark themes, disguised under cheerful-sounding melodies. Despite the similarity, it’s immediately apparent that his solo work is totally its own thing and feels very different from Yr Ods. 

 

As you might know from my post about Yr Ods, Griff is based in Cardiff, but originally from North Wales, specifically the Bangor area. Aside from being a musician, he is also a film director. He has directed short films and documentaries, and lots of music videos for various Welsh artists. He also used to be a presenter on S4C (the Welsh-language TV channel). Griff’s siblings – Lewys and Casi Wyn – are musicians too. I mention this because their music has been featured in my song of the day series, and I had no idea they were related until now. Lewys is the frontman of the Welsh-language indie rock band Yr Eira, several of whose songs I shared in the first year of my blog’s existence. Lewys also has an electronic music project called Sywel Nyw, collaborating with various other artists. Casi is best known for her solo project , Casi & the Blind Harpist, which I have loved for years. One song by Casi I shared relatively recently is this heavenly piece called Nefolion (Celestial Beings), coincidentally released on Griff’s record label – Lwcus T Records. – 

 

Yr Enfys is Griff’s most recent single from 2022. I really like how it sounds happy and care-free on the surface, but is actually sad. And there’s something quite cute about it. While I can’t do a literal translation because I don’t understand every word, I believe I have a pretty good idea of what it is about and will share a bit so you’ll know too. Basically, it’s about how the grass is not always greener on the other side. It tells the story of a girl named Eleri, who once saw a colourful rainbow. She decided to go to the end of it, thinking she’d find gold and become a millionaire. She walks all the way, through fields and forests, full of unwavering optimism. But, predictably, once she gets there, she realises there’s no gold. Here’s the song.