Author: Kevin McGeary

Tutor, storyteller and songster.

2022

Kevin McGeary

As with perhaps most people, this was the year I said bye to the pandemic and hello to a bunch of other challenges. Here are some of the things I did.

Tutoring: Since 2019, my main professional activity has been tutoring. This year, as well as continuing with private pupils, losing some and gaining others, I have also started with corporate clients. Say what you want about it, I have always benefited from the structure of corporate life.

Platforms I teach over include Tutorful and Musicteachers. Some of my lessons can be found online for free, including Chinese for Absolute Beginners, and Intermediate Chinese Reading: Ancient Poetry.

The Kev: The creative highlight of this year was of course the gig at Academy 3 on August 20th.

Recording professionally is slow and expensive, but I have already written the next The Kev album, and it will be released in 2023, hopefully in the spring.

麦凯文: I wrote three new Chinese songs, and rewrote an old one. This was probably the most daunting task I set myself at the start of the year, but the launch event in February will be a satisfying farewell to my China years. I miss the place but my run there is over, as I explain in this song.

Non-fiction: Literature is, according to former Oxford professor John Carey, the highest of all artforms. Reasons for this include that literature is the only art that can criticise itself, and the only art that is capable of reasoning.

Although returning to fiction feels a long way away, this year I wrote multiple essays, including one that got published in Litro. I also started a Substack, and adapted the pieces into video essays.

Skits: I always wanted to master the art of comedy, but being a naturally earnest person seemed like a disadvantage. Nonetheless, this year I recorded four skits, and wrote more. All got good feedback.

Music: I ran a series of monthly covers, popular songs that I have always adored. These included ‘Little Miss Strange’ by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, and ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Dreams Come Through’ by Meatloaf, who we sadly lost this year.

I also uploaded four classical guitar videos, ‘Eternal Flame’ by The Bangles, ‘Ave Verum Corpus’ by Mozart, ‘Cancion de Cuna’ by Leo Bröuwer, and ‘Linden Lea’ by Ralph Vaughn Williams:

Beyond the Wings, December 2022

Kevin McGeary

I have decided to start the OYNB (One Year No Beer) challenge early, so on Christmas Day, when Charles III delivers the King’s Speech for the first time, I am unlikely to carry on like this.

Output

This month, I recorded my first classical guitar piece since the middle of the summer. ‘Cancion de Cuna’ by Cuban maestro Leo Bröuwer was not written specifically for Christmas but sounds like it might as well have been.

I also uploaded covers of ‘The Long and Winding Road’ by The Beatles, and ‘It’s Clichéd to Be Cynical at Christmas’ by Half Man Half Biscuit.

I also finished another between-song skit:

One of my biggest hopes for 2023 is to be able to film some skits with high production values.

Activities

For the first time since 2013, I am being paid to write reports about China. Topics include everything from the recent anti-government protests, to Mandopop, to the problems with the healthcare system. Here are some extracts:

The tuition business is thriving, but the different areas of it – writing, music, English, Chinese – continue to ebb and flow.

Wider World

Christmas is a time when refugees are celebrated. Mary and Joseph had to search for a place to give birth before having to flee King Herod. This year has been, among other things, the year of the refugee.

The modern definition of the word refugee was drafted in the UN’s 1951 convention as someone who is outside of their country of nationality and is unable to return because of well-founded fears of being persecuted. In 2022 this phenomenon has happened on a continent that seemed to have moved beyond land war.

With the climate catastrophe manifesting itself in the form of Pakistan’s floods and China’s drought, nobody is in a position to be complacent about their own probability of becoming a refugee. This reminds me of a poem by holocaust survivor Primo Levi:

Shemà – Primo Levi

You who live secure

In your warm houses

Who return at evening to find

Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider whether this is a man,

Who labours in the mud

Who knows no peace

Who fights for a crust of bread

Who dies at a yes or a no.

Consider whether this is a woman,

Without hair or name

With no more strength to remember

Eyes empty and womb cold

As a frog in winter.

Consider that this has been:

I commend these words to you.

Engrave them on your hearts

When you are in your house, when you walk on your way,

When you go to bed, when you rise.

Repeat them to your children.

Or may your house crumble,

Disease render you powerless,

Your offspring avert their faces from you.