Birdsong, Blindness and a Dog's Tale
Gracious sounds of life
An open window
I was on a zoom call this morning with two songwriting collaborators. One guy, an Italian drummer living in Estonia, asked me about the birdsong. I had hardly noticed it. My window was open, as it is now, and he could hear the magnificent birdsong outside my window in the Irish countryside.
I love birdsong; but I hadn’t even noticed it. Nor had I paused for a moment to be grateful that I could hear.
Inner Vision
My other songwriting collaborator this morning trades under the name ‘The Rayne’. He has a magnificent song out, recently released, called “Inner Vision”. You can listen to it here on Spotify, here on YouTube or here on Apple Music. I think it’s an extraordinary piece of music and a wonderful song, brilliantly sung by a great artist. And it’s a poignant title for a song created and sung by a blind man.
And there’s the second thing. Apart from taking my hearing for granted, I take my sight for granted too.
Man’s best friend
We have a lovely dog, a collie. He and I get on great together. It’s true what they say about a dog being a man’s best friend. But yesterday, walking out in a field, he went charging after another dog and didn’t come back when I called him. I actually hurt my voice I called so loud to him. And he ignored me. I was worried that the two dogs would fight. Luckily, they didn’t.
I did everything wrong. I repeatedly called him, when I should only have called him once. I put him on a lead when he came back to me, which won’t much entice him to come back to me next time. I felt angry, humiliated and relieved – but I only shared with him my displeasure, not my relief. He also lost his favourite ball while charging like a maniac towards the other dog. We looked for it together but we couldn’t find it in the long grass.
Anatomy of a decision
I made good progress on my second memoir this week. I got two episodes, of 800 ‘good words’ each, completed in one day. One night, I wanted to get out of bed to continue writing, even though I’d only just got into bed. I felt excited, my mood mirroring the time in my life that I was writing about.
I now realize that I made an important decision over the course of one month almost 30 years ago. I began September 1994 not realizing, by month’s end, that I would have made a life-changing, life-shaping choice. I find it fascinating dissecting the anatomy of that decision and seeing how it unfolded over 30 days.
Joe Armstrong’s first memoir is In My Gut, I Don’t Believe. For reviews, see here. He is currently writing his second memoir, Saved by a Woman.