Ian McMillan is enjoying a stroll on his minimalist mornings

I’ll tell you what: I like minimalist music. I’ll tell you what: I like minimalist music. I’ll tell you this: I like minimalist music. I’ll tell you what: I like minimalist music. I could carry on in this vein but I won’t. You’ll have got the drift; those four sentences were the same, or at least three of them were.
Ian McMillanIan McMillan
Ian McMillan
By The Newsroom
Published 4th Mar 2023, 06:00 BST

In one of them I swapped the word ‘what’ for the word ‘this’ but apart from that (or ‘this’, or ‘what’) they were the same. The recent 85th birthday of the American minimalist composer Philip Glass got me thinking again about the kind of music he wrote. If you don’t know it, I urge you to seek it out. It’s quite a lot like the first paragraph of this column; repeated clusters of notes that gradually vary a little or a lot, but mainly a little. I find his music moving and hypnotic, although for the sake of balance I have to say that some people, like my musician mate Luke for instance, who says that it just sounds like somebody practising their scales on a piano in an empty room. Ah well, each to their own.

My interest in minimalism stretches to language, too. I like listening in to conversations that are just slight variations on conversations that have been had many times before. On my early stroll I usually see a bloke walking his dog and I say ‘Morning’ and he says ‘Morning.’ It’s a tiny human exchange but like with Philip Glass’s music there are a number of variations. Sometimes he says ‘Morning’ first and sometimes I say ‘Morning’ first. Sometimes there’s a long gap between one ‘Morning’ and the next and sometimes the gap is tiny. If it’s windy or rainy our ‘Morning’ is louder and on still June mornings when it’s broad daylight even at 05.30 our ‘Morning’ is almost a whisper. Occasionally and magically we sometimes say ‘Morning’ at the same time and it’s as though a spell had been cast. Sometimes I think that I’ll try, in the Philip Glass style, a slight variation and I’ll say ‘Good morning’ or ‘Hello’ but I think that might spoil it. Unless he’s thinking the same thing, and we both say ‘Good morning’ at the same time.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

My early stroll itself is a kind of minimalist composition, I always think, because it’s inevitably the same but sometimes with very slight alterations. I leave the house at 0520. I turn right down the street and right down the lane. I walk past the roundabout and then go down the hill. I see the bloke with the dog and we speak our word. I go up another hill and if the papers have been delivered I buy my Yorkshire Post and if they haven’t I resolve to come back later. I love the fact that it’s always the same route and I love finding different things to see on the same few square yards of the map.

What this teaches me is to take notice of the small things, or the things that are often overlooked. The way that bus shelter shines in streetlight. The way a black cat is like its own shadow as it moves across a garden. The way someone on the early bus slumps asleep against the window. The way me and dog walker say the same word every day.

Here's an idea; for the next month I’ll record each ‘Morning’ that we say and I’ll turn them into a piece of music. Tell you what: I’ll drop Philip Glass a line.

Related topics:Yorkshire PostAmerican