In early October I was doing a really deep dive into beginner music repertoire, which has lots of repeated notes; I was enjoying the plaintive slow reels of Michael McGoldrick; I heard a motif I liked in a pop song. In my personal life, I was trying to reframe a situation from ‘painful’ into ‘an inevitable step towards growth and joy’. One Monday morning I woke up with this piece of music in my head! I like the way it moves musically from melancholic to a sense of release … it’s a helpful metaphor for me. As Béarla, I call it ‘Perfect Transmutation’.