GREY’S NOTES
by Michael Grey.
Piping Today #100 • 2020.
Beyond nostalgia, I imagine one reason for the popularity of old posters, crate labels, postcards and magazines is due to the ease in which these items can be shipped. Online sites everywhere are bursting with stock for sale; from old newspapers to matchbook covers and everything in between.
You may know these things are known as ephemera to those most interested, namely, collectors. And this stuff is collected. Ephemera. While it’s a Greek word meaning “lasting only one day”, it has the ring of the name of old Uist aunties: Hughina, Fenella – and Ephemera. I imagine Auntie E, yet, with yellow nicotine fingers and a purse full of linty mints – and absolutely no time for collecting old bits of paper.
Still, in collecting old bits of paper a person can experience a unique, first-hand look at a reflection of the past. Rather than own an impersonal mass-produced curio, I think there is real interest in owning a remnant from another time and place: a piece of ephemera. Even the most modest example like, say, an old postcard, can extend considerable insight.
The best piece, it seems to me, documents overlooked details of a time, a place – and a life.
Consider this postcard pictured on the right. It landed in my hands courtesy of GS McLennan’s grandson, Hamish McLennan. As you can see, it’s postmarked Fort George, 11 August, 1924. The sender was GS McLennan’s brother, 23-year-old Donald Ross MacLennan1, the recipient: his sister-in-law, Nona, and, it can be assumed, GS, too. For those not up on cursive writing it reads:
Ft. George
10:8:24
Many thanks for note. Have just got back from Strathpeffer. John MacDonald (Inverness) got all the firsts and I all the 2nds and same for dancing.
Tell Mary Aitken I got 2nd for Shean Trews at the Command Sports!
Love from Donald.
Today we’d text a message like this, or, for the really self-assured, post the news on social media. In the 1920s, a card like this was as close as it came to speedy communication. Forget the telephone: in Britain of the early 1920s there were only 15 phones for every 1000 people. The post was it.
It wasn’t this postcard alone that got me thinking about ephemera. It was a mild day last month. A “January thaw”, as said in my part of the world. On these brief days, when the temperature rises a glorious 5 or 8 degrees above freezing, miraculous little mayfly-like insects appear. They emerge from the brief thaw and live their chilly momentary lives. Every one of their minutes of life equal, maybe, to a year of ours. Scientists acknowledge this. Creatures such as these are known as ephemerids. Their evanescence is fascinating.
But pity not the ephemerid. We might look in the mirror. The most-said aphorism is surely, “life is short”. And so it is.
We come. We go. How many today know of Donald Ross MacLennan, or, that he was always known as “DR”? With each passing year the number dwindles. John MacDonald (Inverness)? To a few hundred piobaireachd aficionados his name – one of the greatest in the pantheon of pipers – will be known. And then there’s Mary Aitken, she’s more than the title of a clever jig in John Wilson’s first book of music (1937). Mary was the superstar Highland dancer of her day.
It was in reading Bill Bryson’s latest book, The Body: A Guide for Occupants (2019), that underscored my understanding of ephemera and that life is high on the list of things ephemeral. Bryson explores the workings of the human body – including death and dying – in his usual brilliant way, with facts and anecdotes galore. Consider the gravestone. Everyone’s favourite subject. We generally seek to honour our dead and, in some cases, I guess, ourselves with stone-marked “resting places”. Bryson found that the average grave is visited for only 15 years. People, like memory, fade.
In reflecting on things ephemeral, the performance of music must be even higher on the list of things short-lived. An unrecorded musical performance is a temporary sound track of a moment – and place – in time. When the last note has been played, the “thing” is gone. Over. Released to the heavens. What could be more ephemeral? The performances of the first and second prize-winners at the 1924 Strathpeffer games may still swirl somewhere in the ether. But for us, they are long forgotten.
On a cheerier note, playwright Eugene Ionesco said that only the ephemeral is of lasting value. It’s so often the way that paradoxical statements – like Ionesco’s – make you stop – and think. The ephemeral, as in performance, is of the moment and as such an expression of an artist’s intention; while not lasting itself, it impresses on listeners and, so, lingers. Think of an occasion where you took in live music, one where you felt something. Where you were moved emotionally. In this, maybe, we have one example of the lasting value of the ephemeral.
The lesson offered by an old postcard and a wee January ephemerid is clear (well, to me and Aunt Hughina, at least). Live to be your best. Each moment is precious and life is fleeting. Oh, and record your performances. They’ll last longer.
- Hamish McLennan advises GS McLennan’s brother, DR, spelled his last name MACLennan, while the rest of the family were MCLennan. ↩︎
Mike Grey is the pipe major of 78th Fraser Highlanders since September 2023, and he teaches, judges, writes and publishes bagpipe music. His Grey’s Notes series ran in Piping Today magazine for ten years. His Grey’s Notes book is available here.