Monday, 17 April 2023

ON THE ROAD GOING NOWHERE - an update

The phrase "the good enough mother" was coined by the British pediatrician and psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott in his famous book Playing and Reality.

On the Road Going Nowhere, my latest attempt at song writing, probably belongs, for me anyway, in the category of a good enough track.

I’m not yet certain that the sentiments expressed will prove to be ‘true’ but at the present time they feel that way. I have recorded several versions but am undecided about making any of them available. 

Being on the road to nowhere is not meant to be a hopeless sort of place to be in. There are millions of us on the road of not going anywhere special or anywhere in particular and who are just glad to have enough money and be well enough to get on with the tasks of ordinary everyday living.

As for all that goes on around me separate from the song writing it’s impossible not to be profoundly saddened - partly because it seems impossible to do anything significant about it- that the unrelenting and overriding drives of greed and grift which have infected so many continue to make such basic aspirations for so many others so incredibly hard to achieve. I should probably have said impossible.

As regards what writing songs can do about it. That’s a question I have repeatedly asked myself without ever getting a satisfactory answer. And yet for a very long time I have kept writing them. On the Road Going Nowhere may be a spur to some fresh thinking.