Fast Gybe

Sometimes a string of words or the glimpse of an idea just gets stuck in your head. Sometimes they carry a pattern and a tune, sometimes you have to go looking for it.

It used to happen for me a lot. These days, not so much. For a long while I thought it was because I couldn't find the silence and solitude that I used to enjoy as a kid back when this song writing thing was easy, although the output of those very early years was at best variable, and when not at best quite questionable in quality.

Fortunately nobody knows what a cassette tape is these days, or would have any way to play one if such were to land in their lap, so the evidence of the really early stuff is long buried.

And then, once the kids grew up, moved out and I got a little bit of quiet and solitude back, I figured it was just one of those things that came with getting older, along with bruises and cracked ribs not healing as fast, tendons tightening, joints taking it in turn to ache and all that.

But actually, all things considered, I think it's just application. Or perhaps a blend of motivation, time and application. Life generates distractions and competing priorities.

I recorded this Friday evening. I wrote it across the week just gone. I've had two solid weeks of sailing that I wouldn't have traded for anything but I missed my guitar, so we had some making up to do.

I haven't really settled on a name for it yet. It's got a working title (or two) of course, but I'm not sure it needs more as these days, other than the occasionally open mic night when the pubs open up again, I've nowhere to really take it. I love playing with my band, miss them and our audience terribly, but my band, as it stands today, isn't the format for this kind of thing.

I used to think that mattered. That a song needed a gig. But I've discovered that whilst that's nice, it really doesn't. The song in an end in itself.