As the weekend ebbs away and a new week approaches, you find me sitting in the junk room, listening to music, and attempting to shut the rest of the world out for at least a little while.
Emptying a few thoughts into the keyboard is proving deceptively difficult.
Not quite knowing where to start, I’ll start with today.
I spent the majority of today wandering around a nearby town with my middle daughter. She asked last night if I might accompany her. I had no other plans, so shrugged, smiled, and said “why not?”.
I needed some new clothes anyway.
In response to the warmer temperatures this weekend, yesterday morning saw me digging through the clothes drawers in the bedroom yesterday in search of any kind of shorts. I came back empty handed. I wondered for some time about their whereabouts, and then yesterday evening recalled perhaps throwing them away, on account of them falling to pieces.
I’m regularly reprimanded for wearing clothes in various states of disrepair - be that socks with holes, torn trousers, ripped shirts, or whatever else it might be.
Along the way the gravitational pull of both the record store, and the bookshop grew too strong. I came home having bought three vinyl albums, and three books. I would be listening to the albums now, but my other half tends to dictate what goes on in the living room (where the record player is) - hence me sitting in the study, listening to Spotify.
I’m still on the female recording-artist bent - today’s haul brought Carly Rae Jepsen, Kate Bush, and Carole King albums to the collection. And yes - it’s “the” Carole King album - “Tapestry”. I’ll listen to it later; for the moment Carly is singing about beach houses and lonely times. The Kate Bush album is the one with the oriental cover - “Wuthering Heights” and “The Man with the Child in his Eyes” are among the tracks.
As much as I love the serendipity of flipping through vinyl records in the music store, I will admit to frustration that they don’t have everything I might go looking for. I guess the world of streaming music has shifted expectations somewhat. You can’t underestimate chance discoveries though. An algorithmic time-line would never have caught my eye with Miles Davis.
“On Green Dolphin Street” remains one of my favorite instrumental pieces of music - if you get the chance to listen to Miles Davis’ rendition, it’s so worth it. I think it was originally included on an album called “Kind of Blue”. You can close your eyes while listening and be teleported to just about anywhere, and any time. In a strange sort of way, it’s a soundtrack to all of our lives.
Anyway.
Here we are, or here I am. Writing. Trying to remember how to open the faucet filled with words that used to flow so freely. I’m not quite the open book I once was. I think once you start filtering what you share with the wider world, you begin to hesitate about everything - or at last I do.
For me, getting started is the hardest part. Letting go. Once I start writing, it’s not so bad. Those first few words though… painful.