What's Your New Song?

Just lately, I've been pining for old-school blogging. I've hardly posted here in the last couple of years, and that feels like a massive shame.

So, I'm going to try and begin again. It's not for any other reason than the proper, old, original reason blogs began – as places to keep track of our days and the journeys through them. That's all. And I, for one, would like that back.

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You know, that picture up there, about old ways and new doors? Isn't it great? (Not my shot, by the way.) But let me tell you a secret – on the other side of the door, amidst everything being completely unfamiliar and new, you have to work at finding some new, and really deep anchor points or risk being swept adrift. 

I live in a new house. It is so unbelievably different to the gentle, crocheted and designed-by-candlelight world I've been living in on my own for so long, and yet it is a world I very much want to be in. It's proving an awful lot harder than I ever imagined, but what I'm trying to learn is how to find anchor points when everything looks and feels so alien.

There must be a way to shift from one side of a door to the other, without going completely insane, surely!!

Well, there's an old piano in this house, and after something like 25 years since last serious efforts I decided to play some chords on that piano. I found some sheet music with different, flowing Cole Porter chords on, and played those chords, and they sounded beautiful. Braver, I found a song book, and now some more beautiful Joni Mitchell chords are chiming in over my bluesy singing as I learn to play again. 

'Blue' is the song, and it talks about songs being like tattoos:

"songs are like tattoos - 
You know I've been to sea before.
Crown and anchor me,

Or let me sail away...

You've got to keep thinking
You can make it through these waves."

To sea, alright – yet words and music are rich, soulful and deep. Perhaps deep enough to become anchors? I hope so. 

I'll keep playing, and singing, and try to stop going mad (honestly, my poor partner - he's such a love) and hopefully get better at being the other side of the door. 

It's nice to be back at the Lightbox, although maybe let's hold the tattoo for another time. I hope this space can come to life again and be a place of really great anchor points, charting an adventurous journey – just the way it was always intended. 

{Today's Soundtrack: Joni Mitchell - Blue}