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Jan 20, 2023Liked by Kat Healy

It's lovely to hear you singing again, and with harmonies too. Simple, but engaging, and shows off your voice to good effect.

I hope that you find songs on the music site to develop your singing back to the level you want; this sounds like a good start, and I hope you share your progress with us here on KHK.

I've known the poem "Spellbound" for some time and although I'd been puzzled by the nature of "the tyrant spell", I'd never bothered to look any deeper into it. Maybe it felt familiar as it was written when Emily was living over the hill in the next valley at Haworth; I'm in my home area, the ironically named Happy Valley, so the poem has the sweep of the landscape here, and that was enough for me.

Anyway, thanks to you, I've now read a number of analyses of the poem, and have found an explanation I'm happy with, Thank you, that's another "I must do that sometime" crossed off the list.

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Jan 24, 2023·edited Jan 24, 2023Author

Thank you Russell :) it was great to sing a little bit. A positive start, at least. Did you research that Emily B and her siblings wrote about an imaginary world called Gondal (or somth)? I thought that was interesting. It might be the imagined setting for 'Spellbound'. I was going to go down that rabbit hole, but decided it warranted a more focused written reflection, along with the fact that the three sisters went by pseudonyms - always fascinates me. I've just had a thought, is Happy Valley the same village that inspired the BBC series 'Happy Valley' written by Sally Wainwright? It's based in Yorkshire, so I think it might be!

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Jan 24, 2023·edited Jan 24, 2023

Hello Kat. Correct on all counts. Gondal was the imaginary island the Bronte sisters created, and there seems to have been collaboration, or at least acknowledgement of the siblings contributions to the whole. Spellbound does not appear in the list of Gondal poems, and is possibly one of the poems Emily regarded as private, becoming distressed when Charlotte found them. (You can tell I jumped down the rabbit hole, having been nudged to look at the poem again by your use of it.) Having read Wuthering Heights for O level (a type of exam used in ancient times), I tried to re-read it recently, but found it just too brutal to read for pleasure, it's a savage tale that I found hard going.

Yes, my home area is the Calder Valley, the real-life setting for Gentleman Jack, and the place where Last Tango in Halifax and Happy Valley are set. My home village of Sowerby has not been included as a location, though most places around us have. In case it wasn't clear, Happy Valley is the name the local police use for the Calder Valley because of its drug problem.

There is a grandeur, a strength and a wildness to the landscape; I was reminded of those when Irene came to stay some time back; she'd no idea landscapes like ours existed outside of the wilds of Scotland and Wales. Hopefully you and Thilo will get to play down here at some stage and see for yourself.

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Jan 20, 2023Liked by Kat Healy

Sounds so so lovely, very well done :)

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Thank you, and thank you for all your music tech tutoring :) xx

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