Woken because of the cats and strange dreams full of ghosts in the corners of a house; there's also something else.
Sometimes there is a thing I do, as a kind of gift. If something happens and I feel for it or the people involved, a song or part of a song comes into my head, and I write it or sing it or both. It becomes theirs, and leaves my mind because it is no longer mine. I say or sing it in dedication, I don't show it to anyone living, and I forget it; that combination of words/notes is nothing really because often there is nothing I can do. But it is the equivalent for me of leaving a flower on a grave. I don't pick the flower back up and take it home because it has become the property of another.
This morning in my dreams, such a song came back to me for the first time, and I wonder if it is because I didn't complete it or do it well enough for them the first time. It connects to the Not War we seem to be approaching or are in already.
About a week back, a kindly older gentleman said to me, 'Well, I expect that Cameron will get his way now and we will start bombing Syria...'
Cameron the representative of British arms sales across the middle east, Cameron, supporter of undemocratic regimes whose government gave aid to known fanatics and helped them to become core elements of Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, Daesh. Cameron, knower of pigs, the man with the photoshopped poppy. This man will get his way.
We discussed it for a while. 'Are the British people ready for body bags?' I asked.
'Yes,' he said, 'I think they are.'
I wondered if the gent's certainty that his children would never be in a battle might subconsciously enhance his confidence, how his opinions might change if he ever saw one of his kids brought back dead from a war. And I wonder if he knows why we are doing it, if anybody really knows.
Back to the song... and it is not a war song or a protest song, it is just a song, crudely wrought, maybe not properly finished at all. Maybe that is why it came back, because it just isn't ready as a gift, but the more worked on it gets, the less immediate it will become.
If it returns at all, it is right to return in a dream full of ghosts.
Outside a bird is singing, two notes repeated, solitary and very sweet.
Sometimes there is a thing I do, as a kind of gift. If something happens and I feel for it or the people involved, a song or part of a song comes into my head, and I write it or sing it or both. It becomes theirs, and leaves my mind because it is no longer mine. I say or sing it in dedication, I don't show it to anyone living, and I forget it; that combination of words/notes is nothing really because often there is nothing I can do. But it is the equivalent for me of leaving a flower on a grave. I don't pick the flower back up and take it home because it has become the property of another.
This morning in my dreams, such a song came back to me for the first time, and I wonder if it is because I didn't complete it or do it well enough for them the first time. It connects to the Not War we seem to be approaching or are in already.
About a week back, a kindly older gentleman said to me, 'Well, I expect that Cameron will get his way now and we will start bombing Syria...'
Cameron the representative of British arms sales across the middle east, Cameron, supporter of undemocratic regimes whose government gave aid to known fanatics and helped them to become core elements of Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, Daesh. Cameron, knower of pigs, the man with the photoshopped poppy. This man will get his way.
We discussed it for a while. 'Are the British people ready for body bags?' I asked.
'Yes,' he said, 'I think they are.'
I wondered if the gent's certainty that his children would never be in a battle might subconsciously enhance his confidence, how his opinions might change if he ever saw one of his kids brought back dead from a war. And I wonder if he knows why we are doing it, if anybody really knows.
Back to the song... and it is not a war song or a protest song, it is just a song, crudely wrought, maybe not properly finished at all. Maybe that is why it came back, because it just isn't ready as a gift, but the more worked on it gets, the less immediate it will become.
If it returns at all, it is right to return in a dream full of ghosts.
Outside a bird is singing, two notes repeated, solitary and very sweet.