My final portfolio submissions for this semester of my Creative Writing MA include a musical touring show, called Patch Stories, which shares stories and songs about the Coat of Hopes. Some of the songs that go with that script are below.
Patch Story #1 Still Time: This is a song about how there’s still time to offer our unique gifts in service to the world and how there are still things to be hopeful for.
Patch Story #2 The Coat of Hopes Song. Barbara’s original lyrics and music are available on the Coat of Hopes website.
Patch Story #3 Kindness is Golden. This song was inspired by all the stories I’ve been reading recently about community groups who first began their hopeful projects around kitchen tables. Two of these include Wild Maple Field and Incredible Edible. It’s also about the kindness, love and understanding within communities, because the journey is not always easy. But with kindness, it will grow.
Patch Story #4 One Step: This song was written around twenty years ago, but only when it met the Coat of Hopes this year did it really find its purpose. A good version to watch is the one in this video from the Coat of Hopes‘ Facebook page: Meeting the Coat of Hopes.
This is a version that was performed live with our band Hand to Hand in 2023.
Patch Story #5 Animals: I was fortunate recently to be able to walk with the Coat of Hopes for a day. The Coat’s Way Finder, Helen Locke, told me a story of how the Coat was made, including how the stitching in the above picture came to be there. “Sleep on the bumps”, is deliberately sewn upside down, and it comes from a wonderful Dervla Murphy Quote. The words of that quote were so inspiring, I decided to turn them into lyrics. The result is this song, with my music, but with Dervla Murphy’s words. This song is dedicated to Helen.
“But I know, and have always known, that we 20th-century humans need to escape at intervals from that alien world which has so abruptly replaced the environment that bred us. We need to be close to, and opposed to, and sometimes subservient to, and always respectful of the physical realities of the planet we live on. We need to receive its pure silences and attend to its winds, to wade through its rivers and sweat under its sun, to plough through its sands and sleep on its bumps. Not all the time, but often enough for us to remember that we are animals. Clever animals, yet ultimately dependent, like any other animal, on the forces of Nature.” Dervla Murphy
Patch Story #6 All Hearts & Hands: I started writing this song back in 2019, when I had the idea to create lyrics using some of the many slogans and banners from the climate marches of that same year. It was only during this semester that the chorus came to me and the song was finished.
Patch Song #7 The River: This song was inspired by the Rock Garden at the University of East Anglia.
Celeste Lovick 