Voices of my Heart

Ah, music…! Music hath charms! And Justin Hayward I will love forever. That mournful, soulful, beautiful voice that makes you melt into a helpless puddle of inability to do anything but listen. There are some voices that can really touch your heart and give you goosebumps. His is one of mine.
There are many reasons why I will like a song. Sometimes it’s the voice. Sometimes it’s the melody or something in the quality of the sound. Sometimes it’s the words or the message or a hidden meaning – or just a memory that the song evokes. Sometimes, if I am very lucky, all of the above reasons combine into one perfect, universe-shattering song, and those ones are of course the ones I love most of all.
I cannot survive without music. I freely admit I’m a music addict. A junkie. It energizes me, it makes me happy, sad, pensive, or contented. It makes me think. Which is very, very important. A mind without thought is a dry well, a desert among oases. Without the proper sort of thought I can’t write – which is totally unacceptable and makes me ill.
On that note, I really must change CD… I may be a while.

All Departures from Platform X

The great and mysterious omniscient collective known to the general public as ‘They’ say that travel broadens the mind. Well, that’s true – although one could argue of course that any new experience broadens the mind. I like travelling. I enjoy the sensation of moving through, across, or over places I’ve never seen before. And I also enjoy travelling even when it isn’t new to me. I like being ‘on the road’. Speaking literally, I actually prefer boats and trains and aeroplanes to the physical road , but I was using the term metaphorically. I like watching the clouds. I like the gentle movement of motion. I do NOT like waiting in traffic for what seems like centuries, but I suppose that sometimes that side of travelling is a necessary evil. The cloud to the silver lining. I often like the people too. Recently I met a very nice young man while I was on a long coach journey. He turned out to be a drama student at university and a Shakespeare fan, which suited me down to the ground. We had a nice literary discussion, albeit punctuated with disturbances by my badly behaved luggage. The fact that I always carry half a library with me on journeys, and the equally indisputable fact that my coat resembles a yeti, should be sufficient explanation. It was fun.
I also rather enjoy the mad scramble when you’ve been having coffee at the stop and suddenly realize the coach leaves in three minutes. The cafe is ten minutes away …
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to rescue my fellow passenger from a yeti. Oh, it’s just my coat.

Trials and Tribulations of the Country Mouse

Cities are bizarre places. Thousands of people living on top of each other, scrambling backwards and forwards like ants in a school experiment, scuttling around incessantly until they drop dead from exhaustion or go insane from chlorophyll deprivation. I cannot live in a city. Two weeks and I am ill. Three and I’m ready to jump off a bridge. I need trees, open space, and lots of green. I hate looking out of my window and seeing the houses crammed in together with only a garden the size of a postage stamp separating each person’s tiny world from everyone else’s. Nature is so overwhelmingly beautiful, how can anyone really prefer to live in a city? I understand that the rhythm of a city can be exciting and intriguing, and I do love the architecture in many cities. They are fascinating places. But at the end of the day I want to breathe. And all the architecture I really need is the astounding grace of a huge beech tree…

Green Turtles at Twenty Past Midnight

This is my first blog so bear with me please. These are my thoughts so this blog may well be odd at times. Just promise me you’ll keep reading anyway.
Twenty minutes into tomorrow and I can’t help wondering if anyone else is awake now on this pretty planet thinking anything remotely similar to the things that are floating around my brain. Such a contingency is doubtful. My thoughts are often bizarre and random in the extreme. But then I suppose that’s partly what writing is about. You don’t know if anyone thinks like you, so you put your thoughts and ideas out there in the cold just in case they strike a chord with someone. And if they don’t, well, at least you were able to get them out of your head to make more room for new ones. It gets like that when you have a constant stream of ideas and dreams. Rather like green turtles, I’ve always thought. You know what I mean – thousands, millions of tiny babies rushing and surging to get to the sea, climbing over each other in the panic, but only a small percentage of them actually make it out into the ocean where they can breathe a sigh of relief and grow into beautiful things … As long as they don’t get ripped to shreds along the way, of course.
My thoughts do this all the time. And when the few fortunates do emerge onto paper or screen, I can only hold my breath and hope the sharks will leave them alone. Please let my turtle thoughts live!
I told you it would be odd.