(Top shelf)
My elder son unusually came to discuss lifes “direction”, and of course the conversation that ensued had anything but. Sorry, but this Dad rambles if you let him.
Nathan is a creative in outlook and temperament, and while I have written the odd verse, I have been too long surrounded by those with real talent, to consider myself artistic, so the wisdom I attempt to share is the reflected light of the luminaries I have know, met and called friends. I paint life in the colours that they have given me.
I try to show how the tides of life have swept these artists up and down, into strange corners, and how the most unlikely beginings came from chance meetings. I talk of the currents (of music) that picked them (and I) up and how they swirlled into a giant cauldron, called Dalmallyfest, and cascaded out.
Now I’m caught.
On some level, I know I’m no longer really addressing my son, but helpless in a whirlpool of memories, my own stories, and like a mariner adrift I am steered only the tales themselves, each of which follows another, brings some new character, some pearl of wisdom, some hard wrought lesson, or just an immense smile.
I’d like to think I’m talking about the power of collaboration, of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts, but really I’ve just opened a top cupboard and the memories are falling out all over me, and I wonder, why I don’t look at them more often?
“…and your point Dad?”
I’m standing in the kitchen leaning on the fridge, and the muddy field (there was always a muddy field) becomes black and white tiles, and the music almost fades away.
“No son, I guess I don’t have a….You need to find the people, your people, then, then you can do anything.”
It’s a Lucky Dogs Life.
Next week on IaDL: when you get a text at 2am asking how to play G#m6-in open chords (to impress a girl?)
Dalmallyfest the Asylum 