Saturday 30 January 2021

The Girl in the Red Dress

As I was preparing the ebook companion to the double CD The Unknowable Next I became suddenly engaged with the words which began with the line A child took my hand. Without hesitation I copied them into a separate document, printed it and took it to the room where I have my main recording equipment.

I do occasionally record an idea on my iPhone and have several portable recorders but this is where I go if I am seriously intent on trying to get a ‘good recording’.  Good in that it might be a track I will choose to get mastered or will ask someone to arrange for me. 

On this occasion I became very focused and wanted to both record the words and find a tune. And I stayed with the task until I had a track which came close to what I wanted. The outcome was in no way special but it gave me enough of what I wanted for me to leave it alone – for a while anyway. No changes were made to the words I had printed.

 On moving away from recording the words I opened my iPad and discovered there was an email from the woman who is referred to in the lyric as ‘a mother’. She rarely contacts me and this was a relatively rare communication. More amazing I thought, was the video attached to the email. In one of the features of children dancing was a girl in a red dress. And this was the child, now older, who had taken my hand and ‘walked me through a garden’.

Once the song had been arranged - and I hope I am right about this – I thought it might be worth sharing as it expresses something of that loss we all know when we have to let go of a dream Or when we are having to accept that a dream we had is no longer likely to be realized.

The song can be found on my web site at www.skcsongs.com and on BANDCAMP at https://sheilakcameron.bandcamp.com/track/and-a-longing-goes-to-rest

 

 

 

 

Wednesday 20 January 2021

We Could Live in a Hut

 And we nearly did.

On arriving in Masset on Haida Gwaii (known at that time as The Queen Charlotte Islands I met with a man who offered his hut as a place to stay until a room at a hotel could be negotiated. With a friend we acccepted and began cleaning the place to make it habitable for the night. The Principal of one of the schools heard we were planning to stay there and came to rescue us.