Sting's album "The Last Ship"

I've been doing something very uncharacteristic of me recently, and have been listening to Sting's album "The Last Ship", repeatedly. I happened to watch Dune on TV the other week (he's an awesome loony in that film), and heard on the news that the musical version of this wasn't doing too well on Broadway, so I decided to give it a go listening on Spotify 'cos it's free.

It's all in Geordie! And that's fantastic. :) More people should be singing in regional accents and dialects. I also like that it's telling little stories. It's all about people's lives, working on shipyards in Newcastle. Apparently the overall story of the musical is about a prodigal son leaving, then coming back later in his life to seek out a girl he knew, and find love.

I guess it's the curse of the expat - you leave an area for whatever reason, but once you're gone... after time, without realising you miss the place, you begin to cling to little things that link you to the place, and eventually, you end up cherishing the place.

But by the time that's happened, you've been gone so long that the place has completely changed. So even if you try going back, that place you remember doesn't exist anymore, and you spend your time spreading your memories all over the rest of the world. A tiny pocket of a lost culture that lives in your brain, preserved, stored in stasis. Perhaps exaggerated.

I've noticed my mother telling me "this is the way Chinese do this" many times, when I know - they don't do anything like that anymore at all. She retains the ideas that were given to her by her elders - family who fled China a long time ago; before Mao, before cultural reformations, long before the newfound wealth it has nowadays. It's a little pocket of China that no longer exists. This is how it's been preserved.

This album has that quality too - wow, the North-East and its people have gone through some hard times in the past, and there was so much more hard physical labour work. The accents were stronger. The people were stronger. The money was scarcer. The prospects were unthinkable. He's done well to document it, and the spirit of the people in this work, in an entertaining and catchy way.

I bet the folks going to see it on Broadway can't understand a word of it, though. Poor things. Theatre productions don't come with subtitles, haha!