Friday 7th June

More and more I find myself lost in the words of a song.  Words have always been important to me; maybe I have put too much trust in the written and spoken word, taking them too literally, when others saw them as just devices, artifacts or weapons.  I have sporadically written poetry since I can remember, often just  a few words that seemed to hang together, to express perfectly a moment, a glance, an aspiration of beauty.  And the poetry I was attracted to was the words of songs.  And in a funny way they become mine, the listener by repetition becomes the owner of the words; they become mine, in fact I may have written them.

There isn’t much room for ‘Poetry’ in today’s busy lifestyles, but the need is still there.  So the popular song has taken over.  Time was when I would sit with every new album reading the words printed on the back cover, learning all the words to all the songs off by heart.  CDs stopped that pursuit; the silly little books are a poor substitute so I don’t bother nowadays, but the words still find their way into my brain somehow, worming their way in.

And when the music stops I find I am still lost in the words of a song; sometimes little more than a phrase, which keeps repeating over and over in what is left of my mind.  Maybe I have listened to too much music over the years, I still keep buying stuff though – often new CD copies of albums I only now have on tape, but new stuff too.  Still searching for that Holy Grail; the perfect phrase, which still eludes me, and so I spend much of my time remembering lines of songs that I thought I might have forgotten.

I can see my future, and compared to many it isn’t so bad, even if much of the time though my body is here and I still smile and chat quite sensibly I am actually lost in the words of a song.