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On a dusty corner in Berlin stands a grand old café called Sankt Oberholz. Inside you may find the odd table of friends, the odd couple having an awkward first date… but what will strike you upon entering is the number of people sitting alone with their macs (it is rare to encounter a pc person!) .. it’s strangely beautiful to see all the lonely people together.. lonely together.. einsam zusammen.. a very modern phenomenon..

When i first moved to Berlin i was there often and I sometimes wondered why we don’t just talk to each other.. but being shy i just continued to upload demos to myspace (this was pre-facebook and pre the skype-whisperers you encounter there now)..

anyway.. this song was inspired by this new kind of loneliness i discovered in a time when our inherent need to *search* (be it for love, or a job, a place in the world or meaning in the universe) was being slowly but surely replaced by a far less challenging ability… to *google*

i have had a love-hate relationship with the internet ever since. I have spent entire nights watching Ellen interview Nicole Kidman or wasted hours typing messages to men i knew i would never meet.. I have killed time whilst all the while time killed me watching Meryl Streep win her Oscars and Catherine Tate be “not drunk enough” .. time i could have spent writing music, or a letter to a friend, or being out there *in* my life where i *might* actually meet somebody unphotoshopped and in 3D! The internet has oft led the way to self-loathing and frustration.

On the other hand, without it I would not know about fainting goats.. or fighting giraffes.. or otters holding hands.. I would probably not have learned of many of the great musicians, artists & poets who now inspire me daily.. I would not have been lucky enough to witness such incredible performances, be it Joni Mitchell singing “Both Sides Now”, Furtwangler conducting Brahms’ 4th Symphony or a little boy singing in front of a Bart Simpson poster who would go on to have the world at his feet .. I would also have not encountered much of the inspiration for my songs.. crazy facts i find when one click leads to another and i am led off on tangents of wonderment and awe. I have also made some real-deal true friends online and met some fantastic human beings. And people are also able to find me and my music, for which i am grateful.

Recently for example, the wonderful singer and songwriter Teitur was touring Germany. In each town he and his manager were searching via Facebook for a local support act. It was a lovely idea and there was great enthusiasm on Teitur’s page from bands and songwriters sending links to their work, hoping to be chosen. Very late the night before I knew Teitur and his manager would be choosing the Berlin act, I quickly wrote a little song called “Good morning, Teitur” to introduce myself.. well it worked.. and at 4pm the next day I got the call from the manager asking could i be at Lido at 6 for soundcheck.. I was having coffee with my friend Katja at the time and I asked “wanna come play cello at a concert with me?” and she said “ok when?” and i said “right now” and she said “ok”.. meanwhile Stefi out at Traumton was grabbing a box of CDs and hurrying for the train.. I love my friends! It was such a special night and a great opportunity to do a live performance one week before my CD release concert. The best part of the whole thing was to hear Teitur himself.. his wonderful being.. his spirit.. his voice.. his lyrics.. he is truly inspired and inspiring. I’m definitely a Teitur fan now.

so i guess to be online isn’t always to be offlife after all..

listen to my song “sankt oberholz” and download the free app for your smart phone here.

people often ask me where I get my ideas from.. how i come up with these words and this music.. where it all comes from.. what it feels like to write a song..

it feels like a visit from the cat from next door.

usually, on the days i write a song.. i wake up in the morning with a feeling that something is waiting for me in the room.. that there’s an idea under the bed.. or some inspiration behind the sofa..

as if the cat from next door has decided to honour me with a visit.

this is a delicate moment. while i feel indeed honoured and a little excited by the visit, it is vital not to approach the cat straight away.. no .. i pretend it’s not there (although of course it knows i know and i know it knows i know).. and i go about my morning routine.. making coffee.. occasionally checking out of the corner of my eye that it’s still sitting in the corner by the window..

eventually .. once i have demonstrated that i can respect it’s space, that i won’t covet or force it in any way, that i will not try to trap it or claim it as my own.. once i have earned it’s trust.. finally.. we meet eye to eye..

the cat already knows the song.. but it would never lower itself to simply teach it to me.. rather, it wills me to discover the song for myself.. to work to shape and mould the song into a form which in the end will feel inevitable.. there is a way the song is meant to be.. there is a way the song wants to be.. and achieving this is as much about getting myself out of the way as it is about getting myself involved. the cat is not active in the process. it is both the guardian of the song and the representative of my artistic conscience. the cat simply gives me a little look every now and then that says ‘there is no way around.. you must go right through it .. through the thickest grove of the forest, through the darkest hour of the night, through the hottest reach of the desert or the coldest month of the winter.. no short cuts.. no cut corners.. only what is honestly and honourably fought for will ring true’.. the cat ensures the process is always intuitive and never habitual.

sometimes it’s painless and easy .. all over in 20 minutes.. the cat goes home and i’m left with a few scribbled-on pieces of paper and an odd combination of euphoria (‘this is a really good song’) and trepidation (‘people are going to think I did this alone and expect me to do it again’)..

sometimes it takes longer. sometimes it’s a wrestling match. sometimes i wonder if the cat should have visited leonard cohen with this one instead.. but i have to trust that if the cat chose to visit me then i must be able to uncover this song-secret.. even if it takes months.. for the cat seems to be quite sure of itself.

sometimes the cat goes home and I feel the song is done.. but two nights later i wake up with the cat heavy on my chest and it’s breath on my face and i know.. i have to change those lyrics in the second verse.. so i scramble out of bed, fumbling for the light-switch and a pencil.. the cat settles in to the warm spot left behind on my pillow.. knowing that it’s presence is enough..

the cat is not mine.

nor are the songs.

i sleep with the window open.

“Give her plenty of space

Let her think it’s a race

To the wall at the end of it all

And she’ll bounce back into place”

Years ago, when I was a student in Brisbane, I was playing piano for a 60th birthday celebration. The party took place in a lovely home filled with lovely people and I remember the piano was a well-loved old Steinway, a little out of tune - a grandpa piano with stories to tell.

Late in the evening I was playing one of my favourite songs, “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” when an elderly gentleman who had been sitting the whole evening in a comfortable old armchair stood and tottered his way across the room until, resting his glass on the piano, he looked at me with eyes full of tears and wonderment and asked a softly spoken question: “how does one so young know this beautiful song?” I replied that I loved this song.. that I loved all these old songs and that they just don’t write them like that anymore.. He asked, “Do you know what it’s about?”.. I answered, “It’s about falling in love, isn’t it?” .. He said “yes..” , and smiled, “but, for me.. more”..

He told me that as a young man he had lived in London. He told me that during the war, with the gunfire and the bombing, with the blitzkrieg and the screams, with the fear that hung so heavy in the air.. all the birds left the city. He asked me if I’d ever been in a city with no birds and he told me that one notices the absence of their chatter and their song.. that the silence they leave behind fills you with dread and shame. He told me that several months passed after the war ended before the birds slowly began to return. He told me he had lived in a little flat just near Berkeley Square. He told me he could distinctly remember the first time he had heard a Nightingale singing in post-war London and it was in that moment that he felt, for the first time, that everything was somehow going to be alright. He told me this with tears in his eyes. He told me that he did not know when the song was written or who had written the song, but that through the years this song had become his dear friend and that he had not expected to hear it in Brisbane that night on the birthday of his son.

Several years later, I read an article on yahoo news telling of the expulsion of a star from the Milky Way galaxy.

Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics had discovered that two ‘sister stars’, which had been orbiting each other for thousands of years, had suddenly met an extraordinary fate. One star drifted a little too close to the black hole at the center of the milky way and was ‘claimed’ by it. The force of this event drop-kicked the other star, propelling her at 2.4 million kilometers per second along a path which would ultimately see her break free of the gravitational confines of the Milky Way.. she was like a stone flung from God’s own slingshot and, chances are, nothing will stop her. She is, they believe, the first celestial body to be thrown out of the Galaxy. It’s an astounding story and I was completely gobsmacked by it!

Some days after reading it, my thoughts turned to the nightingale man and his story..

I thought also of the poet, John Keats.

I had studied the poetry of Keats in my final year of high school. I was lucky and blessed to have a wonderful English teacher, Mrs Bennett (“with two ts and not to be confused with that dreadful mother from “Pride & Prejudice”!), and it was Mrs Bennett who introduced me to Keats. I think.. in a way.. I fell in love with him.. I remember the picture of him on his death bed on the cover of the book, but 24 years old, and I wished I could have known him and I wished I could have made him chicken soup.

Keats and I.. we both seemed to have a bit of a thing for Beauty (Beauty with a capital B) .. “A thing of beauty is a joy forever” he famously wrote, and in many of his poems he apostrophises a beauty-full thing and longs to fuse with it, to share the “unchangable” and everlasting qualities of an object “not born for death”, to hold a moment of joy or ecstasy forever.

In his ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, it is not the bird itself but rather the beauty and immortality of her song which he aches to become one with. “The voice I hear this passing night was heard        

  In ancient days by emperor and clown”, he writes, and it is a voice he believed would be heard uninterrupted throughout the centuries.

 In his sonnet, ‘Bright Star’ he longs to be as “steadfast” and “unchangable” as the star he apostrophises, that he might forever hold on to a moment of Beauty.. in this case..  lying on the breast (I believed he meant ‘chest’) of his beloved (I believed he meant me).

The story from the birthday party and the news of the star twisted together in my mind and I realised.. that something is wrong in the world.. in the universe.. that Beauty is in grave danger and that it fell to me, as Montmorensy, to let Keats know that the Nightingale had indeed ceased to sing  and that stars were being flung out of the galaxy. What if this star (SDSS J090745.0+24507) was the exact same star that Keats had pinned his hopes on all those years ago?

The song, ‘Runaway Star’ explores the reaction of childlike wonderment at such an inconceivable event as a ‘stellar outcast’.. but there are more distilled moments in the song which almost take the form of a letter to Keats.. a way of reconnecting with him, gently letting him know that the things of Beauty which he held so dear and that should indeed have been joys forever were being driven from the cities and shot out of the heavens. It seeks to console him, to offer hope.. It also asks him what we can do with this new information, that the Beauty we had always held to be immortal and “stedfast” was in fact vulnerable and losable after all..

Well she can’t have gone far

That little runaway star

And I wonder if one day she’ll come back around..

She was somebody’s sister

She was nobody’s daughter though

And the funny thing is

She was everyone’s sun

And I’d like to know why

Why she was the one

Was it just to spite the poet,

The know it all, Mister Right?

And so it had to be the one to fall into the dark, dark night?

Give her plenty of space

Let her think it’s a race

To the wall at the end of it all

And she’ll bounce back into place

My darling there are things you need to face

For your nightingale holds her air

Seems the Blitz gave her quite a scare

She’s refusing her soul to bare more

And I’m wondering where to from there

Navigation is not so clear

And we’re left in the dark down here

When a star can just disappear

And I’m wondering where to from here

Where to from there

Wondering where to from nowhere

eccentricity mustn’t be rewarded

we must keep our ordinary orbit

When I was a little boy, i was *obsessed* with outer-space, with stars and planets and solar-systems and galaxies, with supernovae and nebulae, with the rings of Saturn, the craters on the moon and Jupiter’s stormy red spot!

I had stars ‘n’ planets wallpaper in my bedroom, I had a “Return of the Jedi” doona cover and my little whirring “constellation finder” would project the southern night sky onto my ceiling each night, slowly rotating in sync with the galaxy, oddly named after a chocolate bar.

Did you know that the bottom star of the two ‘pointers’ which point to the Southern Cross.. Beta Centauri.. is actually *two* stars and that the naked eye can’t distinguish them and just fuses them into one? Or that one of the stars that make up the constellation Orion, or “the big saucepan” is actually a *nebula*? I did. I could see it through my telescope! On any night clear of cloud, I’d be out there in the backyard scouring the skies.. until the craving for warm Milo took me over!

I could not wait for 1986, and with it Halley’s Comet to come to Grafton!

I would drive my sisters crazy rattling off the names of the planets in order.. how i *loved* those planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune annnnnd Pluto! The nine planets of the solar-system!

I knew that one day on Pluto was about 6.4 “earth days” and that one year on Pluto (the time it takes to orbit the sun once) was nearly 248 “earth years” .. imagine waiting that long for Christmas!!

When people asked me what i wanted to be when I grew up, I would give them an honest answer with a voice slightly tinged with the disappointment that they had failed to notice I was already quite grown up: “I would like to be an astronomer and in my spare time I would like to write music for the movies” ..

….. .. … ….. .. … ….. .. … ….. .. … ….. [years pass] …..  … .. ….. … .. ….. … .. ….. … .. …..

On August 24, 2006 the International Astronomical Union attended their General Annual Meeting in Prague. I, having decided to to study Modern History and not Physics in senior high school, was not amongst them.

Late that afternoon.. the afternoon of August 24, 2006 the International Astronomical Union announced to the world that Pluto was no longer to be counted amongst the planets of the solar system, that Pluto was no longer a planet at all, that Pluto was now a dwarf, number 134340.

I drifted into a state of defeated bewilderment as my inner child slipped under his ‘Return of the Jedi’ doona and refused to show his face.

What sort of people would un-discover a great discovery? How could they take that away from Clyde Tombaugh? From Percival Lowell who spent the last years of his life searching for the elusive ninth planet he knew *must* be out there beyond Neptune? From the Observatory named after him? From 1930?

Who did these people think they *were*?

They said that the other 8 planets all orbit the sun in a perfect ellipse on a perfectly flat plane.

They said that Pluto’s ellipse was far from perfect, that sometimes he pushes in front of Neptune. They said that Pluto’s orbit was too eccentric (they actually used that word). They said that Pluto’s orbit had an inclination of 17º. They said that this was unacceptable. They said that Pluto is not a planet anymore.

I began to taste what was happening here.. what this was truly about.. It began to dawn on me.. to seep into my consciousness.. that Pluto had not been demoted.. he had not been reclassified.. Pluto had been excommunicated.

I was filled with a combination of shame on behalf of these people and fear to live in their world.

I awoke oft in the night.

I trembled opening my letterbox.

I imagined receiving a letter from the International Anthropological Union which read:

“Dear Montmorensy,

At the recent Annual General Meeting of the International Anthropological Union the definition of ‘person’ was addressed and adjusted. Due to your level of eccentricity and a certain inclination you possess, we regret to inform you that you are no longer a person. Please cease any actions and terminate any relationships which may be defined as personal. Your myspace and facebook pages will be automatically deleted at the end of the month.

Kind regards,

the members of the IAU.”

….. … .. ….. … .. ….. … .. ….. … .. ….. … .. ….. … .. ….. … .. ….. … .. ….. … .. ….. … .. …..

and so.. the song..

‘Pluto’ takes place late on the evening of August 24, 2006. Parents watching the late night news have just been informed that Pluto is no longer a planet. Fathers must creep into their son’s bedrooms and rip the glow-in-the-dark Pluto stickers off the ceiling. Mothers must snip the Plutos off the solar-system mobiles. It must be done swiftly and with stealth. They must remove the little ex-planet from the lives and imaginations of their children. It will not be spoken of in the morning.

Universe

Galaxy

Milky Way

Solar System

Earth

Prague

August 24th, Two Thousand Six

In the bedrooms of little boys

Fathers stretching on boxes of toys

Feeling the ceiling

Tippy toes, daddy knows.

Fingernails peeling off what?

Rip!

Plutos!

There he glows, there he goes.

Poor Pluto!

Poor Pluto! Do you know you’re no planet anymore?

Mother with scissors creeps down the hall

Bothered she shivers to see him fall

Ball on a string

(A delicate thing)

Tippy toes, mummy knows.

Shhhhh! here she goes….

She snipped him off that solar system mobile

She suddenly missed him so while

Venus pushed Mercury into the Sun!

The rings of Saturn unravelled, undone!

Jupiter felt her weight needed that counter weight

And promptly plopped to the floor

Which left more or less everything dangling well..

Eccentrically, particularly Earth: Prague.

Mickey cried, Donald died,

Walt Disney  turned in his grave…

Poor Pluto! Do you know you’re no planet anymore?

(Do you have a radio?)

Poor Pluto! Do you know you’re no planet anymore?

Eccentricity musn’t be rewarded

We must keep our ordinary orbit

www.montmorensy.com