I spent a part of my day today, driving an hour and a half to, an hour and a half from the site where I had work. Thanks to my little scooter (yes, I name my cars), I have a USB drive on which I have stored a lovely, eclectic mix of music, and it made the drive much more pleasant. Some of what I heard today….

REM, Dixie Chicks, John Denver, Roberta Flack, Merle Haggard, Slobberbone, Styx, Indigo Girls, Neil Diamond, Olivia Newton John, Supertramp, Pat Benatar…you get the idea.As this blog grows, one of the things you will learn about me, if you haven’t discovered it already, is that I have many interests. This is true with my poetry, the other writings that I will eventually add (you’ll have to wait a bit for these), and most especially the music that I love. I’m not sure how, just yet, but I will be taking advantage of this experience to not only share the poems, snippets, scribbles, and short works-in-progress with you, but also the music and the people behind the music that so inspired me with their words.

I am a self-proclaimed lyric fanatic. I have forever been fascinated with the many ways in which words have been put together and then set to music (or the other way around). When I was in grade school, it was not unusual at all to find me, sometimes frantically, scribbling out the lyrics to certain songs. Part of this was because the song was stuck in my head (if interested, see Some Old Song), but it was stuck there because it fascinated me, resonated with me, or was just catchy enough to force it to run through my head…over and over again. It would be true to say that I was rarely able to properly concentrate until the song was at least mostly written out…so I apologize to my teachers for not always giving them my full attention, but I couldn’t help it. I now realize that those were the early signs of the mild OCD that I apparently have. Interesting…okay, it’s interesting to me.

Examples of what I may have been scribbling out:

Me and Little Andy ~ Dolly Parton
the best friend a story ever had…my opinion.

Broomstick Cowboy ~ Bobby Goldsboro

Look them up, and check them out.

I would sit in front of our gigantic piece of furniture which was our stereo (sorry can’t find any pics, so far) and listen to these albums. Somehow, this led me to attempt to set words to rhyme; I was inspired – and around that the time, in the mid-eighties, I first saw news and advertising for the horrible famine in Ethiopia. It moved me. It moved me to write really sappy poems, but it’s interesting to look back on them. Here’s one, the only good-ish one really:

Senses

The silence is killing me,
their songs I hear no more.
The eyes show me the pain.
Why has everyone closed their door.

The shape they’re in is frightening.
Will I ever see them run?
Their bodies are growing weaker.
No help comes from the sun.

I wish that I could reach out
and pull them close to heart,
give them all the love they need,
but an ocean keeps us apart.

I can smell the sands that surround them
that have enveloped them in pain.
I can smell the salt behind the tears
that have never been rinsed by rain.

L. Rose (1984)

Okay, I know, I was fourteen or fifteen – complete sad sack, sappy-sapperson. I warned you I’d do this :). Not music, by any stretch of the word, but the two things are linked – the music I grew up listening to and the words, and cadences, and patterns that I enjoy trying to fit together. Thank you tunes!

Happy listening! Happy writing!

Linda