Folk is a place I go to sometimes for any number of reasons, but ultimately I go there to forget about me and the world which I inhabit, though there is nothing wrong with the world I inhabit, just that it's a very different to the folk world, which is, ironically perhaps, my own imagined village. Folk is home; folk is family, belonging, community; folk is where I came from , but it's not what I am, or where I am, or even who I am, but it's an essential part of all these things. Folk is a continuity of a process, at least perceived, wherein at least the notion of The Tradition becomes possible, wherein we might glimpse something wondrous & truly sublime and become part of that experience however so briefly. Folk empowers that notion, which, to me, is essential to the well-being of my human soul. Folk is the past within us, some of us at any rate, within me certainly, which informs my beggarly place in the overall scheme of things - woolly jumpers, dreary monologues, hands-off proprietorial nonsense and all. Folk is big enough, and small enough, for it all.