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 …
