Synchronicity

Following on from my amazing coincidental arrangement to have lunch with Ms M and Cas on my blog birthday, today my Dad requested a copy of some lyrics I wrote when I was much younger.

I have a scary memory stuffed full of the words of thousands of songs ... mostly other people's but also everything I've ever written it seems ... so I found myself typing out the words to a song that I wrote when I was 17? 18? 19? (I'm 31 now - those years are a bit of a blur despite the clarity on the words themselves). I don't remember writing it - it seems like it was always there just waiting to be written down. I know that I recorded it in the band I was briefly in when I was 20 ... with the most talented singer I've had the joy of working with. Who, of course, I came to be writing music with because she was the glass collector in a pub where I was serving drinks and I overheard her singing in the loo.

Fitting.

I don't think it's an amazing feat of lyrical achievement - but I do still believe strongly in the subject matter - so much so at the moment when I have so many lovely people in my life through blogging. And so, typing it out to email to my Dad (I have no idea why he wants it) it struck me that at the time that I wrote this song I had no concept of a 'blog'. Which made me think of the wonderful contractual clause for rights in TV these days "All rights in all media now known or hereafter invented... ".

I am sure when I wrote this I would have applied the same clause. I just wouldn't have known it. Because I didn't know much ... a lot of fancy stuff with numbers and the whole back catalogue of the Smiths were about the limits of my wisdom at that age.

Anyway ... er ... please add your own smoke and beer ... here's a little number I wrote when I was just a kid, and with a small nod to the late great Carl Jung I'd like to dedicate it to his fan Ms M. I call it Synchronicity ...

these interlocking interlinking hands are weaving patterns of coherence
mapping out the paths the steps the dance this rhythm, making sense
of sights and sounds and words and pictures, sketching, drawing it together
twisting tying knots the threads of life unbroken spun forever

don't try to tell me that there's nothing going on
it's all around you, believe and you will see
don't try to tell me that there's nothing going on
it's all around you, it's synchronicity

scratch the surface feel the pulse this living breathing breeding force
undercurrents shifting tides that surge the river down its course
the fluid fragile webs of plans we're spinning growing day by day by day
the ever present wind of change blows complex til they fade away

don't try to tell me that there's nothing going on
it's all around you, believe and you will see
don't try to tell me that there's nothing going on
it's all around you, it's synchronicity

Buzzed about blogging

Badger's post on what it feels like to have tourette's disorder has been shortlisted for Post of the Week!

Well done Badger!

Just 8 posts made it to the shortlist this week - so to be amongst those is a huge achievement.

A friend of ours recently said to Badger "Blogging is boring", and I'm still blown away by that comment. It reminded me of when I talked to the team at the BBC's Imagine programme about blogging. There was a wonderful moment in which they suddenly realised that it was not about websites or technology or news or reporting or personal diaries - it was about relationships. I introduced them to the wonderful Natalie of Blaugustine, and watched their confusion and hostility towards bloggers melt into warmth and humour and understanding.

My blog brings me into relationship with many lovely people, but also facilitates communication between different parts of myself. I can no longer work with the concept of 'real life' being outside of my online relationships - surely these are real lives being lived and expressed regardless of the medium? Instead I have settled on a notion of 'whole-life' friends. Those who are part of my blogging community, with whom I also meet up in the flesh.

In just 34 days time, Caroline's book, In Search of Adam, will be published in hardback (yes - hardback! - that's for serious grown-up writers only!) and a whole bunch of us bloggy friends will be gathering together at the book launch event (details to emerge soon says Cas) to support her and celebrate her achievements. We won't be there out of obligation. We won't be there to network. We will be there because we love Cas and believe in her. How gorgeous is that?

Currently, we are running a little treasure hunt over on the In Search of Adam Map - which now has almost 200 pins in position! The treasure hunt clues lead you to the blogs of people on the map, and whilst it's really just for fun, we also hope that people will discover new blogs, new friends and new relationships whilst they are hunting. One of my most valuable bloggy finds recently has been lovely Maht at The Moon Topples, who has been running a very community spirited Short Fiction competition.

I haven't written a fiction story since I was at primary school. The idea of doing it terrified me. But I did do it, and I enjoyed it. As Maht says: if you like your entry, you are a winner. Wise words. I do like my entry (resisting inner voice that says I sound like a conceited wanker saying that). I liked the process and I'm content with the result - I don't think it's brilliant, but it answered my own questions. Simultaneously, I've discovered that someone on the other side of the world has read my whole NaNoWriMo story. I wrote something like 15,000 words of the beginning of a book last November, before illness interrupted me. Prompted by Natalie, I chucked it up online fairly recently in a secret location under a pseudonym, and I have a stat counter on there too. I guess I was interested to know what the response of any unconnected stranger who stumbled upon it might be ... and then somebody did.

I don't know who this person is. I know that they are in thailand, and I know that they found my blog simply by clicking on the 'next random blog' type link. Then, over 4 days, they made 3 visits of about an hour each, and read the whole thing.

Isn't that kind of exciting?

Not in an 'omg I could be an author!' kind of way. More in a 'wow, somebody has digested my thoughts' kind of way.

Of course, it's always possible that they were simply trying to learn English, and sitting with a dictionary in hand trying to work out what my peculiar turn of phrase meant ;)

But still. I'm buzzed. Buzzed by it all - Badger's post of the week shortlisting, Cas's book launch, the Map that keeps joining us to more wonderful people, Maht's short fiction comp, the stranger in Bangkok who has read my book, the fact that a whole bunch of my lovely blogging friends did a group meditation all around the world at 2pm on Wednesday as I was going into surgery, plus, above, the most beautiful flowers I've ever had - sent by the gorgeous Ms Melancholy.

*sigh*

I am a happy little blogger.