Apologies for being missing; Real Life has intervened temporarily. As a result, tonight's post will be relatively short, as I need to do some of that Writing stuff that will hopefully one day pay the bills.
I was thinking about writing a short post, and thought about how to get an interesting idea across quickly, and my mind turned - as minds do - to music. How to get an idea across properly, well and comprehensively in a very small number of words and a short amount of time is something that good pop music (using that term in its broadest sense) has always been wonderful at, in the same way as sonnets would have been the form of choice in an age without radio or TV.
And a recent album illustrated that neatly for me, so I thought I'd talk about it.
The album is "Build a Rocket Boys!" by Elbow, and it's a great album, every song.
But there is one song in particular that encapsulates the ability of music to capture an emotion through the combination of words, delivery and the music itself, and that is "Lippy Kids". I would recommend anyone who can to listen to the album any which way you can, and have a listen to this song.
Maybe you won't like it, maybe you'll love it - different things speak to different people in different ways, after all.
It's a song about growing up - actually, no that's not right. It's a song about being grown up. It's a song about realising that the days of carefree self-confidence and the associated feelings of invulnerability are behind you, that you will never get them back.
It's a sad song, but it's filled with a wonderful celebration of that feeling, something that only a person who has come through the other side of it can actually feel. With the sense that the people who are still there have no idea quite how precious that feeling actually is, and won't until it's gone.
It makes me want to live my life backwards.
There's one particular couplet, well it's three lines really, but the second one is repeated:
"Do they know those days are golden?
Build a Rocket Boys
Build a Rocket Boys!"
It seems trite written down, I know, but if you hear it, listen to the delivery - the plaintive tone the second time around. Only music can bring that primal feeling about.
Now like I said, maybe you don't feel it. Maybe hearing it, you still feel the lines are trite and meaningless.
Fair enough. We all feel things differently.
But I hear that line and I despair of ever creating something that will make someone feel the way that line makes me feel. But then what can you do but try harder.
Because we all only have a limited time on this earth. Maybe it's up to us to make sure that all of those days are golden ones.
Maybe we all still have time to build our own rockets.
So why am I wasting time writing a blog post and not my book? Why are you wasting time reading it? Go away and Build your Rockets!
Take Care!
Mad Iguana.........
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