Bonfire of the past
This week I thought I’d play a little fast and loose with the Bonfire night them by choosing a song from the band Bonfire – see how I did that! Nice one Linda 🙂
I tried to find a poem about bonfires, honestly I did; but they were all either too long or too depressing and I think I’ve probably given you enough angst to be going on with this month.
This song by Bonfire is called ‘You Make Me Feel’ and I think fits the bill rather nicely as this writing prompt is to write about what this song makes you feel.
Are you sad, reflective, happy or glad to be free of something that has left your life? Perhaps you feel creative or inspired to try something new. Whatever the feeling, now is the time to sit down, tune in and listen to the still small voice that speaks from the heart as the song plays in the background.
As usual if you want to share your thoughts and writing I’d love to read it, and so would my lovely readers. However, it may be private and for your notebook only.
My effort is below:
I’m reflective, I have been for most of the year. It has been a roller coaster of events, circumstances and emotions across so many areas of my life. This song reminds me that this time is drawing to a close and I can never revisit that which is past and those who inhabit that past are lost to me, at least in this physical reality.
I’ve had many sleepless nights with only my roiling thoughts to keep me company. Thoughts that range from global concerns to deeply personal loss and the things I could/should/would have done had I known what I know now. The dustsheets on the album cover remind me of the turmoil when your inner house is disrupted by change.
“The dustsheets on the album cover remind me of the turmoil when your inner house is disrupted by change.”
So true. And thank you, Linda, for posting these writing prompts. They are indeed a source of inspiration.
Isabelle
You are very welcome Isabelle, I’m glad you like them 🙂
Oooh interesting. I wonder what in my inner house still has dust sheets on it. And/or what doesn’t but maybe should have. Do we have rooms in our heads that we would benefit from “putting to sleep” for a season.
(In this context “putting to sleep” is the term English Heritage & our National Trust use for closing up rooms, dust-sheeting them, for a little while – nothing to do with any kind of termination in the sense that vets use the expression)
Lx
UNTIL THE MUSIC
“I was fine until the music started.” I’ve heard that said so many times, mostly at funerals, but in other places too. Music touches us directly. It by-passes the brain and speaks directly to the soul – or the heart, or the emotions, if you’d rather put it in those terms.
Those opening bars took me back to my teens. I’m walking down Pudsey Walk, in the dark, in the snow, feeling sad. If I looked back, I’d see our Christmas Tree filling the window, the string of foil letters reading M-E-R-R-Y- C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S, red string between the letters, a sprig of holly between the words and strung like a smile. I didn’t look back. I kicked melancholy through slush, with the Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin” replaying in my head. First heartbreak.
Then the next phrase, that’s borrowed from something else. “Free”? No! “Freebird” (Lynyrd Skynyrd). So now I’m older, and at university, and trying to find my way between my inner hippy and my work-ethic-serious student, and the hippy is winning out. I’m happy, but I know it’s not going to last. On my way to my second heartbreak.
Then the voice kicks in, and I’m in Germany, listening to local bands and not knowing who I’m in love with…the boyfriend I left behind, the guy I’m writing to and talking to on the phone, or the Germanic Greek God who is dancing with me in a high school gym, where they don’t know you turn the lights down when the music starts.
Or am I in Berlin, “Rock vor dem Reichstag”, a few years earlier?
As it turned out, it was the guy who was writing and phoning that I came back to and stayed with. I have a tape he sent me. This was when mix-tapes were a thing. I labelled this one “Message” which made him smile, and then I asked him: “well, isn’t it?”
It’s full of love songs: songs asking me to come back, to come home; songs about how hard love can be; songs about how beautiful it can be. I got the message. He was the one I went home to. And stayed with until the end.
I listen to this song and it makes me cry because I remember all of those things. Mostly it makes me cry because if Clive had heard it sometime back in the 1980s, it would have been on that tape. It makes me cry because he’s dead now, and I cannot give it to him.
Pull the dust covers back over the guitar, and let me weep.
Music truly does bypass all the usual sentinels we have in place to prevent a mishap memory occurring Lesley, it’s the same with smell. I still remember the smell of the nursery I was sent to age 2 when my sister was born. 14 years later it hit me like a ton of bricks when I went to do some volunteering for Guides.
Dentist smells. Church smells. Libraries, the old USAAF tent my dad had, and I wake up in the mornings to the smell of tobacco that no-one around here smokes… more ideas for prompts.???
You’re welcome.😇👏
Oh, I could do five months of prompts just on each of the senses – now there’s an idea Lesley and thank you. And yes, I often have that tobacco one too – strange eh! Unless of course there are parallel dimensions and we just happen to hit one that’s pretty close.