Author

Anne Skyvington

Births Deaths and Marriages

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Hamlet [Act 1, Scene 5]

Something extraordinary occurs at the occasion of a birth, and also at the time when a loved one is dying. If you are open and ‘tuned in’, you will experience this as something otherworldly and mysterious. William James coined the word ‘numinous’ to explain what can only be otherwise understood as the holy.

Since these are highly charged events, you might be inclined to say that it’s only natural, and nothing-out-of-the-ordinary that loved ones are hugely impacted.

But I’m referring to something much deeper and more mysterious than simply the extremity of the effects of births and death. Special feelings and resonances occur, accompanied sometimes by omens and portents. The dying person calls out: Lift me, as he smiles, tranquil, and subsides into peaceful stillness. The newborn comes out quietly, blinking up at the lights, as if pleased to be here.

Sometimes there’s a shattering of the laws of cause and effect; a breaking down of the veil that separates our three dimensional world from other, perhaps parallel, universes.

Around the time of my father’s death, and for many months, probably years, afterwards, time and space changed for me. It was not that my earthly relationship with my father had been a deeply intimate one. In fact, quite the opposite. He was a quiet and deep thinker, whose ambition for land was a driving force. I was deep but bookish and in search of emotional fulfillment. We weren’t that close in a pragmatic sense. But on a deeper level, we shared important things.

It was simply that matter, phenomena, moved aside at the time of his death, and I had a glimpse, for a moment, into a different dimension. When I try to explain what happened in words, it comes across as the utterings or ideas of a religious nut, an extremist, a fundamentalist freak, a fool. I suppose it is akin to being crazy; I had a breakdown at some stage afterwards. I lay in the foetal position for months in front of the open fire. But then, a moment of grace: the madness lifted, and the light descended. Afterwards, it was as if my whole psyche had been shaken up and reformed into a different mix by the descent into the underworld. Afterwards, I was free of that demon Depression, which had shadowed me up until that time.

In other words, I had learnt that a wish for enlightenment involves a breakdown, a falling into the abyss, and a slowly coming up, shaken to the core. At least, that’s how it had been for me. I arose from this experience with a message for others: Be careful what you wish for.

A similar, if reverse, phenomena happened at the time of my children’s births. They were radiant experiences, even though the second one ended up as a caesarian. With my first baby, Kate, I experienced a change in consciousness as I opened up like a giant evening primrose and offered her up to the world and to the light. You might say it was the drugs; my bed was surrounded by entities, whom I later learnt were student doctors; but they played a role, like actors, in my super-charged experiences. You forget the pain afterwards, and the bundle of joy placed into your arms makes up for the struggle, the hard labour and the exhaustion. But I still remember the strangeness surrounding the birth events, reminiscent of stories of near-death experiences (NDE’s) I’d heard of.

During my first grandson Lee’s water birth, there were suddenly, and without explanation, five of us: the midwife, the husband, the mother-in-law, the mother and the father, surrounding Kate and her oversize stomach, as she lay in the tub of warm water ready to push. Andrei got in with her to support her body, and the rest of us each fulfilled a small task or offered a word of encouragement as the birth progressed. The energy and love in that small room was evident for all of us to witness. Warmth and the light of love seemed to flood us with its wonder and miraculous energy.

I felt alive for the first time in a long while, aware that this was what life was all about: giving birth, nurturing and developing a human soul, so precious, so vulnerable, so strong. There is nothing quite like it on earth, no feeling so powerful as that of pushing out a little human into the world. This is what has made me stronger, capable of protecting another life against all adversity, of mustering up courage in the face of fear, of drawing on all my human strength to nourish and nurture another being. Does this sound far-fetched, extreme, the mouthings of a fool?

If this is what a fool is, then, yes, I am one!

Marriage, too, arrived with foolish trappings. I’d been lonely and falling into negative relationships for a long while. My main focus had been on gaining higher degrees; I was a perpetual student, striving to prove that I was not stupid. It wasn’t even making me happy. In fact, the academic exertions, although successful, had played their part in my breakdown.

I was thirsting for emotional success, not intellectual satisfactions.

I hurried along the bleak corridors of Fisher Library, surrounded by rows and rows of books in metal and timber shelvings, the musty smell, the cold. I was crying silently. I don’t know if it was my spirit guides, or a god that I scarcely believed in, that I summoned that afternoon. But it was to someone or other that I cried out, wordlessly, pleading for them to come and rescue me from my alonenness. Perhaps it’s just that I was ready for change, ready for the next stage of beingness. Or maybe I was heard. Within a very short time, I’d met my life’s partner—an unlikely soul mate, in the person of an unemployed actor, ten years younger than me—at the theatre we’d both joined. It was as if that unreliable narrator that is Life, were playing tricks on me once again: I’d have to support us for years, for God’s sake!

But I was in love and ready to try out this new togetherness thing. Little did I know that the struggles that would confront us would be like those of Sisyphus with his ruthlessly downhill-rolling stone. And I learnt that no one survives this period without a struggle, especially if children are involved, as they were soon for us, too.

And then one day, out of a clear blue sky, the future and the past were conflated with the present. And we arrived at middle age with our lives intact and without having suffered any great tragedies. And with the ability to share a sort of peace and satisfaction together, just the two of us, at last.

February 1, 2020 0 comment

Mythos

The Myth of Persephone and Demeter

The Myth Linked to the Earth Today

We earthlings are being jolted by human damage to our natural home. Climate Change is causing huge shock waves to register throughout the globe. Fierce fires have broken out this summer here, and recently in California and even in Athens, Greece. The temperature of the earth is climbing steadily towards a tipping point. Damaging floods have been increasing in intensity in China, Europe, India and in South East Asia, as the level of the sea continues to rise.

With bushfires ravaging our country at the moment, this ‘myth‘ about transformation may be more than ever relevant to us today in Australia. The feeling that many of us are experiencing is of hopelessness, depression and ‘falling into the abyss’. Like a descent into Hades. Others are asking what it will take for Climate Change deniers to wake up to the fact that something urgent needs to be done.

Like the cycle of the seasons, like death following on after birth, we must also try to keep in mind that ‘this too will pass’. And then, following on from recovery—that may take us months, if not years—let’s be motivated to work courageously together. Let’s work together to make changes, either via the body politic, or as individuals—in whatever capacity we can—so as to ensure that such terrible devastation may not happen ever again in this country in the near future.

Let’s take heart from the firefighters and from the amazing actions of volunteers; and from the outpourings of empathy, of money and of supplies from ordinary citizens here.

Let’s determine to fight for change that needs to occur.

Australians must become ‘climate change warriors’, world leaders in environmental matters, such as replacing the use of coal with energy renewables. For the environment of this country is fragile, something the indigenous owners understood eons ago. We are now playing the role of ‘the canary in the mine’ for the rest of the world to see. Let’s hear and heed the call to action.

We Australians are grieving for our country and for the people and animals who have lost everything, even their lives.

Can this myth assist us in understanding a little better, and in coming to terms with what is happening here? It is the deeper meanings of this myth that resonate with me, and which reflect the experiences of all who must suffer from pain and loss. And isn’t that all of us?

The Meaning of the Myth

Kristina Dryza is recognised as one of the world’s top female futurists, that is, scientists and social scientists whose specialty is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities about the future and how they can emerge from the present. She is also an archetypal consultant and published author. In defining a myth, she referred to James Hillman, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung, experts on mythology. For the purposes of Kristina’s workshop, myths represent the human search for what is true, significant, and meaningful from our cultural past.

Her talk on Persephone and Demeter at the Sydney Jung Society opened me up to some of the more meaningful concepts to do with this archetypal pair. Together, they represent the idea and experience of despair (Demeter) and shock (Persephone), when something untoward happens to you, for example a betrayal, a sickness, or a broken leg. It often comes like a jolt out of the blue. The extreme nature of the bushfires has taken many of us by surprise.

It’s our journey of pain, and no one else can take it for us. No one can understand what it’s like for us while in the underworld of despair and fear. And the hardest thing at the time is to tell ourselves that this too shall pass.

I have for a long while been drawn to the archetype of Persephone. Personal attraction to an archetype is like an urgent calling, something that really speaks to you and urges you to investigate it further. Only recently, have I realised that Persephone must be, necessarily and forever, coupled with the other archetype of Demeter. This, too, makes sense to me from a personal perspective.

What are the transformative aspects of this myth?

The overarching symbol of the underworld is ‘the unknown’. Because it is hidden from view and unseen, it is a realm to be feared. However, one can learn to love the underworld, too, or at least to withstand it. And by so doing, one can gain in fortitude and in endurance.

The Pairing of Persephone and Demeter

The relationship between Persephone and Demeter is basic to the whole myth. Persephone is the golden, naiive child of her mother, Demeter. She lives and plays in the apparent safety of the fields and sunlight provided her by Demeter, Queen of the horizontal world above ground.

As goddess of grains and harvest, Demeter lives on the surface of things, unaware of the dark lurking out of sight; she is therefore lacking wholeness. Kristina reminded us of Jung’s words, that you can either have goodness or wholeness, not both together. In other words, experiencing the dark is part of becoming whole. Demeter imagines that her daughter is safe from harm, happily picking flowers in the sunshine with friends and animals above ground.

Out of a crack in the earth, four black horses appear. Driving a chariot, Hades kidnaps Persephone and takes her against her will, down into the subterranean depths of the underworld. The earth closes up again, and all that is left above ground is the flowers that Persephone was collecting for her mother. She is to be married to Death, the consort of the King of the underworld. The black horses that draw Hades and the chariot represent intelligence, but, in this case, dying consciousness.

Demeter, whose domain is ‘cornucopian’ consciousness, is bereft and enraged over her daughter’s abduction. On a deeper level, however, the rape of Persephone represents for Demeter, a jolting of consciousness. This enables her to access, eventually, deeper levels of herself in order to grow.

The Rape of Persephone
C. Schwartz 1573

The Transformative Meanings of the Myth

Demeter must learn that it cannot be always spring. She starts a relentless search for her daughter, but she remains depressed and angry; these negative emotions cause her surface domain to be depleted. If Persephone receives a shock at her abduction and kidnapping, Demeter is jolted out of her complacency, out of her superficiality. It’s a painful but necessary psychic shift that takes place within her. She experiences loss for the first time, and a new order, a new narrative, is born out of her despair and suffering.

Kristina notes that destruction is often the right hand of creation and creativity.

Persephone represents transformation itself. She can and must go beyond her mother. In order to fulfill her destiny, she must undergo a rebirth into a new narrative, a new consciousness. The underworld is the interior world: that of the unconscious, the archetypes, the collective unconscious, and the unknown and unseen worlds. She now has a chance to become more complete, to find deeper levels of herself through interior work. Persephone also represents victim energy and the wounded healer.

Her journey toward wholeness helps others to heal.

Demetrian consciousness is depth potentiality: the gift of the shadow. She must experience famine, as well as fertility. And when her daughter is taken away, her grief produces that famine on the earthly horizontal level. Persephone, however, is beginning to thaw towards her abductor, and to enjoy her role as Queen of the Underworld. There is much work to be done at the vertical subterranean level. However, her mother’s despair—causing the continuing famine above—convinces Hades that he must relinquish his consort for six months of each year, during which time, she can return to her mother’s embrace, and enjoy the sunshine and fertility above.

The Myth Linked to the Seasons on Earth

Persephone and the Pomegranate

However, Persephone cannot return to the upper world without bringing some of the underworld with her. After all, she is the very bridge into the underworld. When she agrees to eat six pomegranate seeds offered to her by Hades, the deal is done. She must spend half of the year above ground, and the other half in the underworld.

Listen to Kristina’s TED talk on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o4PYNroZBY

January 13, 2020 1 comment

Book Reviews Writing

Creating Karrana

Writing a Novel

Writing a novel has been one of the most exciting and difficult activities I have ever undertaken. It’s something akin to giving birth and bringing up a child; not quite…. You have never done this before, and there is no foolproof manual on how to be successful at it. I don’t believe anyone just knows how to write a novel. Much of it is trial and error. There’s a degree of theory involved, which might include studying the masters, and, it goes without saying, reading modern writers, too. That is, if you want to be a modern author.

Karrana: An Interview

Following is a Q and A interview carried out at the Book Launch of Karrana by a friend, G, and answered by myself, that reflects much about the structure of the novel.

G 1: In reading your book I was struck by the lusciousness of the novel, both the physical and the emotional aspects of life on the north coast after WW2.

If I start with the physical, the Australian bush with its lilting birds and the fiery orange boldness of the trumpet vines is an integral part of the story.

As a writer what did you draw from to create such vivid bush scenes?

A: As a little girl I was free to roam in nature, where I became a part of it — its rhythms, its colours. That vine covered an old barn on Grandma Walker’s farm, opposite our rented house on the Gwydir Highway, drawing sightseers in vehicles to stop and gawk from their car windows in winter and in spring. I felt lucky to be part of this environment.

It was even brighter to a child’s eye; magical, like the multicoloured iridescent feathers of rosellas; and I rolled, competing with hovering bees, in pure white-and-green clover, so abundant and fragrant on the farm; and then riding our horses surrounded by gum trees out in Dad’s bush paddock, a nutty, gorse-like perfume in the air; the silence, broken only by the sound of a kookaburra or water gurgling in pristine creeks, or a wallaby scuttling away.

Much of the flora and fauna on the farm was non-native, like the vine, but well-suited to our sub-tropical climate.

G2: Bridie the young woman “with tossing dark hair that cascaded around her shoulders like Vivien Leigh or one of the other Hollywood stars” as one of the main characters has big dreams and they don’t always coincide with reality. This story is her chance to shine.

How did you get Bridie to take her place in the world?

A: I showed her through the prism of the post-War years, with Australia on the brink of huge changes. As a butterfly-like creature cocooned in a narrow universe, Bridie’s narcissism is put to good use in attracting a mate. She is getting ready, like the nation, to break out and demand more from life than the one her family has allowed her. The question the novel sets up is: Will she be victorious in finding fulfilment, in re-gaining a missed education, or will it be a question of ‘fools rush in’? (ii) If Bridie really existed, I think she’d be a composite of several women from my childhood, both in flesh and on the big screen or in magazines.

G3: In the novel there is a delicious sense of dramatic irony between the two main characters, Bridie and Will.

What characteristics did you set up to test and re-energise their relationship?

A: I’m glad you recognised that. I think a note of irony runs throughout the novel, from the beginning with the sexual symbols of frogs and spiders on the path to the lavatory, to the forced wedding and sexual fulfilment.

Fiery passion causes both to act impulsively in the beginning. However, Bridie learns too late what Will’s plans are. They don’t discuss their differences, assuming that love will win out in the end. It is inevitable that conflict ensues.

G4: There is an interplay of mystery throughout the novel, the unknown lights in the bush; Richard, their son’s accident; the other man Bridie reached out to.

What were you trying to achieve with this interplay of mystery?

A: Well, I’ve always been interested in the interplay of light and dark motifs in fiction, as well as in life. Seasons play a large part in the structure of the novel: Starting out in the spring of rebirth and renewal, and continuing through seasonal fluctuations to a return. Bad things are sometimes presaged by dark imagery, such as blackbirds; awakenings and positives by light motifs. I’ve for long empathised with the underdogs in history, the Jewish people during the War, as well as the Aboriginal Bundjalung tribes of the north coastal region before the English settlers arrived. They are linked to the light motifs in nature.

What was I trying to achieve? Just that, the mystery of Nature, and the mystery within nature. A sense of light and of darker forces at work, beneath the surface of things. Within people, too, of ignorance versus enlightenment that comes through education and progress.

G5: The historical placement of this novel is just after WW2 and Bridie and Will, the two main characters, meet at a Victory dance. In developing the story, you had to go back in time and undertake a certain amount of research.

What did you uncover in your research that helped to drive the novel forward?

A: I researched war songs such as Bless Em All, and Don’t Sit under the Apple and the foxtrots and pride of Erins and waltzes, played at country dances of the time; other songs and movies expressed the blossoming love between Bridie and Will, such as the one my Dad sang to Mum ‘I’ll Take You Home again, Kathleen”.

Great changes were taking place, especially in the cities after the War. I Imagined Bridie hearing American accents and seeing soldiers with war injuries in Sydney. Learning about the new role of women in the War effort is also touched on. I discovered that ignorance and stigma existed at the time. Can you imagine how she must have felt when she heard from a Jewish refugee about the truth of the Holocaust? I made this part of Bridie’s experiential education, learning about it from the doctor. And then I tried to imagine the horror of a mother receiving a telegram announcing the death of a loved one; often delivered on bicycle or on horseback in the country.

G6: In conclusion what were the highlights of writing this novel?

A: It was great being able to draw on childhood and my own life experiences, and to utilise my early outpourings of emotion, a healing component in writing memoir pieces, and then this novel.

I was part of a small, tight-knit writers’ group, Randwick Writers, during which I was able to develop the first draft of the novel; meeting once a fortnight over more than a year. Encouragement from colleagues in the larger group, Waverley Writers, at the Library in Bondi Junction, also played a huge part in giving me the confidence to move forward with the novel and to finish it. Learning how to upload documents to Amazon and Ingram Spark (print-on-demand facility) have also been part of the journey towards publication and distribution. And now, educating myself on the notion of discoverability, which I am still working on.

January 2, 2020 0 comment

Writing

What I learnt from writing a novel…

Before You Start…

I don’t believe anyone just knows how to write a modern novel. There are theoretical questions before you even put pen to paper that a wannabe author needs to consider. Otherwise, you may end up with a hodgepodge of outpourings that no-one is tempted to spend the time reading. Perhaps, as they practise the skill, writers begin to be able to repeat the novel writing activity more and more easily. The following are some of the questions that you will need to answer to begin with.

What Genre is it?

One of the first things you need to know before you start to write a longer work is what genre you’re writing in. Otherwise, it’s likely you’ll never finish it, never feel satisfied with it, nor ever get it published. I’d begun my writing journey by pouring my heart out, about my life, about everything. This was a therapeutic exercise, if nothing else. Then I discovered that I didn’t really know what genre, if any, I was writing in.

Memoir or Autobiography?

Was it fiction, memoir or autobiography—or aspects of each? I’d come to realise that autobiography was usually written by famous people about their whole lives. Mine was closer to memoir, as it dealt with real events and real characters from my family, but with a restricted focus.

How to Write a Memoir

Through research I discovered that a memoir is a more modern genre than an autobiography. Furthermore…

(1 ) A memoir is only part of a life and has a certain focus. (2) It is written utilising creative writing devices, such as characterisation, scenes and events, dialogue, emotive language, and metaphor etc. (3) It has a structure and a dynamism that invite the reader to continue reading it. (4) A memoir is on average 50-60,000 words, that is, shorter than an average novel, (70,000 words) but usually longer than a novella (20-30,000 words). Autobiographies are often much longer, since they involve a lot of ‘telling’, that is, detailing of events in a logical sequence, and may contain photos as well.

Problems with Memoir Writing

There’s an innate problem with writing about your life, and that is that your relatives might not want to be shown up, warts and all, in a publication. Clive James got around that issue by using humour to recreate his childhood narrative, which is part of an autobiography, Unreliable Memoirshttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/398913.Unreliable_Memoirs

Benefits of Writing Fiction

When I turned to fiction, I found I could draw on family events and characters, while transforming them into something ‘other’, yet still ‘true’. To distance myself slightly from the events, I employed a subtly ironic tone, and a narrator who is inside, yet outside, at the same time.

After writing up the first draft of my story, and gaining insight from members of a small writing group made up of writers working on novels, I found myself on my own. No one was able to tell me, even experienced authors and editors, how to shape my work into this most enigmatic of objects—a novel.

Constraints of Writers’ Groups

Writers in groups tend to share short segments of their novels with colleagues. The best feedback one can offer in such a situation is grammatical corrections, or, perhaps, comments on the style of the writing. Positive or negative feedback rarely touches on ‘the big picture’ (of structure, voice, timing, and overall viewpoint), which is the most important and difficult domain of the novelist.

Short Story Writing

Creating a novel proved different from writing a short story, which I’d practised and blogged about here. Being a lot longer, at least eighty thousand words, a novel is more difficult to structure than a shorter genre. After researching novel writing, online and in books, I went back to the drawing board and tried different methods for transforming content (chapters, scenes, segments) into something readable by others.

Looking at the Whole

How do you hold an overview of the whole novel in your mind? This is essential, before you can tie ends together, deleting boring parts, or adding in the motifs, imagery and metaphors that act as signposts for the reader to enjoy the flow of the narrative. This is part of the question of narrative drive. Each chapter and part of the novel must lead logically or thematically on to the next part, for the reader to remain interested—driven!—to read until the end. As a writer, you will have to find your own method for holding the work ‘in the hand of your mind’, so to speak.

The method that I chose was, towards the second half of the process, to lay the chapters out on the kitchen table, from chapter one through to chapter forty, considering themes, arcs and overall ‘meaning’, after having discussed the latter with an narrative expert during a question-and-answer session.

December 27, 2019 0 comment

Mythos

Voices From the Past

Words in a book…

Esther learnt of my existence and found me through words in a family history tome. My older brother had written and published A Little Bit of Irish, while living in a farmhouse in the Isère region not far from the French Alps.

Esther and I discovered that we were cousins and became firm friends straight away.

Many coincidences connected us—we’d spent exactly seven decades on the planet in the same country, the same state, and in the same city. Intuition, creativity, and a love of nature and family were further connections.

At our first meeting, Esther brought along a neat chart she’d drawn to show me the links to our Irish ancestors, going way back through the centuries. It was like ghosts speaking and waving to me from the past.

More recently, Esther emailed me about ‘voices from the past’: people, ancestors, wanting so strongly to speak to us that … physical laws of time and space appear to be broken.

The past lives in us…

She mentioned Charlie Perkins, an Aboriginal activist who studied at the University of Sydney in the sixties. His words, ‘the past lives in us’ meant a great deal to my cousin. Sometimes the past, through the land, sings to us, he’d said.

Aboriginal cultures often speak of the land talking to them.

The mineral pool in Moree spoke to me when I was about three. See my post on this blog.

Esther also referred to Songlines by Bruce Chatwin. This book explores the Aboriginal Dreamtime mythology and the lovely idea that the land was sung into existence: trees, rocks, paths and animals becoming one, along with the singers who sang them into being.

Places from the past…

Paterson and Vacy in the Lower Hunter Valley are further points of connection between us. Her Dixon ancestors first settled there from 1861-1867 and established a home for their expanding families. Vacy, this small remote community, unknown to most people I meet, is precisely where my son Joel, settled with his family in 2005. It’s also where Alice, a common ancestor, was born; the village Vacy, was spelt in historical archives as ‘Nessif’.

Ancestral Voices

Esther writes: I suppose when I say the ancestors speak to me, my body is a great indicator to me—sometimes urging me to follow up on these family matters. When I first began researching the Dixon family I can’t remember what guided me in that direction—something did, when I could have been engaged in my art work, painting my pictures. And when I really started getting into the search once again, I felt such … wellness! I hadn’t felt so well for a long, long time. It was that feeling that made me think something was guiding me in the ‘right’ direction. I was excited at finding more information and finally, I got in touch with William’s book, and then you two (Myself and my sister Susan).

The Dixons (Esther’s ancestors) and the O’Keefes (mine) were cousins, who migrated from County Clare in Ireland in the mid nineteenth century.

Paterson and Vacy, thence to the Clarence

William writes: It would appear that Michael Dixon and his wife, lived in Paterson for some seven years, from 1861 until 1867, whereas Michael O’Keefe and his wife only lived there for three years, from 1862 until 1864. The two related families may have decided to go there together. From this point on, in chapter 4, we need to examine the O’Keefes and the Dixons in parallel, as they move from Paterson up to Grafton: A Little Bit of Irish.

Family History Songlines

Could this urge to seek out past family links produce it’s own version of songlines? By retracing our ancestors’ steps, are we tapping into their songlines? While she’s explored different family members’ journeys, Esther has actually felt herself in the places where they’ve been. It’s such a strong feeling. While reading up on Vacy and Paterson she could feel herself there and picture different settings—buildings, men working, women cooking…. Could these be called ‘songlines’?

Is that the way our ancestors are talking to us?

She believes that there has to be some ‘other dimensional’ influence in all of this (family history singing to us.) She feels that her mother is guiding this, perhaps through her father James.

Ella’s Story

Ella’s story is remarkable, too, though she doesn’t belong by blood to the Dixons and O”Keefes, just by marriage to James Dixon. The way she found out about her story is quite astonishing too. And the way she guided her back in the 1990s to undertake more research.

Maybe it is Ella influencing all of this. She has ‘dialogued’ with her before and will no doubt do so again.

Song lines…

Since responding to Esther’s email, a strange thing has happened. Lyrics and songs from the past, a past in which I could not keep a tune, have been calling on me. Within my otherwise musical family, Dad and I, out of the seven of us, were both tone deaf.

Now I have started to sing, at first tentatively, and then more confidently. I have been even singing in tune, especially Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now. The words and tune from this song have been singing to me day and night for weeks on end. I cannot even remember learning it in the past. But I can now sing it right through, almost perfectly.

November 5, 2019 0 comment