Putting ghosts to rest…
Hottest day of the year so far, and hottest night too I’d bet. It’s too hot to sleep. When I can’t sleep, I find I sometimes think about things too much…
I’ve been taking some time over the last few months to try and sort my head out. I feel I’ve been in a strange place the last year or so, maybe it’s been even longer than that. I felt at times that I’d changed from the person I was, into someone that I didn’t really like.
I’m not trying to be all dramatic, I just think all my life I’ve written words down to help me make sense of things, and that’s what I’m doing now. From poetry when I was younger, lyrics in songs from around the age of 17, to random words and lines in literally hundreds of these little red notebooks I used to get from the ‘Stores’ in the aircraft hanger where I worked for 10 years. I still find them around now, even after several clean outs and house moves, some with only a few words, thoughts or ideas in them, others with full songs that never quite made it past the ‘humming a tune into my phone’ stage.
Where am I going with this? Good question, I think I’m basically taking all these random thoughts from the last few months and trying to jumble them around on the screen in front of me and see if they make any sense. Actually I’m pretty sure there’s an old ‘MB’ or ‘Hasbro’ game with quite a similar concept thrown in the back of my cupboard somewhere, along with 50 or so little red notebooks…
Life for me in recent years felt like it had been traveling at a crazy pace, a pace I knew couldn’t be sustained indefinitely. I’ve felt as if my life in some ways wasn’t really my own, that I was this passenger, just watching it all unfold before me, but not in control of it. Ever felt like that?
About three weeks ago I had a conversation with some of the closest people to me over the last four years, and I made one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make. I’m sure the people who care to know will find out more about it over the next little while. There was no one path that led me to that decision, it was the coming together of several elements, but it was something that I needed to do.
Music is now and always has been a massive part of my life. I’ve always had an obsession with it and I know I always will. I wrote a new song last week, sang it away to myself for hours and for the first time in years felt that incredible ‘buzz’ I used to get when I was younger. Knowing you’ve created something from nothing, from a few bass notes, some lyrics written on a sheet of paper and a melody in your head that you just had to get out. I think I’ve realised that for me, the music really does come first.
Maybe that’s what was missing, that I needed to feel in control of my own destiny again, maybe it was that simple. I suppose only time will tell…
When it’s too hot for me to sleep, I can’t even think. You know a quick fix? Take a cold shower! It works for me and feels so great after.
Music is so part of my life as well. It’s amazing how I can be moved by it both emotionally and mentally. And sometimes physically if I’m at a show ;]