This tune has been adapted from another tune of mine, the reel Maisie Friel’s, in the way in which many Irish melodies are used to create different song, jig, reel, hornpipe and march tempos, which, with necessary timing and melody adjustments make for a new tune. Some jigs fit a reel mould well, but most don’t, and quite a lot of re-arrangement can be required, as in the case of this one. The original tune was heralded at the Forkhill Singers’ weekend in 1995, played for one of its organisers Gerry O’Hanlon, the last part eliciting an explosive, critical utterance from Ciaran Carson … It was then worked on in 2016 in the tranquility of a 12th-century crypt church under Chateau L’Anglais in Puisseguin, St. Emilion, France in the company of a reclining giant steel and copper skeletal sculpture created by artist Patricia Molins. The jig version here is the result of worrying it again during the 2021 lockdown months, aided by five dozen Puisseguin St. Emilion reds couriered over by wine-maker Gérard Dupuy, owner of the said chateau …

This reel started life as an exploration favoured E-minor riffs and sounds in Irish music, with a notion of syncopation and finger ‘drumming’, as in highland and uilleann piping techniques. This creeps in to vary note repetitions (bars 14 – 16) in places where the more typical Irish thing to do is to play rolls (as in bars 10-13). It ended up as a three-parter because the melody seemed to need to go further before arriving comfortably back to the beginning. It is named for the ill-considered, ageist, PR-hype buzzword that emerged in the early Covid-response months of 2020. A cocoon is a place of transformation, inside which small creatures metamorphose, typically a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. Locked-in, we all did somewhat metamorphose nightly, yes, aided by various substances. And the tune did emerge from transformation – a burbling crawl on part one, taking off to risking adventure, and flying as far as it dares before turning for home …