Play The Blues

Once, some people were singing their songs and dancing their dances while the last few who could speak the ancient language were alive. They were trying to record as many kinds of songs as they could - creation story songs, wedding songs, work songs, everyday life story songs. Everything went wrong the entire time they were recording. People disagreed on how to do the songs and dances, they had electrical problems, instruments kept disappearing. Finally, one of the elders called out "Stop, stop!" He said that the spirits were angry because there had been a death just days before and they were not singing the proper songs, funeral songs.  So, the people stopped singing creation story songs, work songs and the like, and began singing songs of sorrowful happenings. Even when they didn't know the words to these songs, the people sounded out each of the syllables of each of the words in their singing and by doing so formed the lyrics perfectly.

These lost words which described the sorrow had turned into parts of words, "syllables of sorrow" and no matter the language, when we hear these syllables which usually descend in tone as does a major chord's slur downward into a minor third, we know that it is a "syllable of sorrow" even when we do not know the meaning of the words. 

We always know when it's a sad song. 

Teatime In York

It's a the "SpeakEasy" pub in York and it's a soundcheck. Jim, the drummer, travels with everything he needs to make a hot cup of tea on the road at anyplace with a level surface, at anytime the band has stopped. Everyone is hard at work, even though they've been sitting in the van since driving here directly from London and only stopped once at a service station (no, no time for Jim's tea kettle there) and everyone is hungry and tired, but that's what tea is for.

The Doorstep

In the daytime, doors open and close. From the street, steps are most usually seen as something to walk up to get to the door.

In the night, an enclosed set of steps in front of a door could mean a place to sit out of the rain. Or, it could appear as a place to sleep somewhat protected from the cold and those who wander the darkness.

Or, a door above the steps could be an entranceway to a warm room with a table where you pay to be given a hot drink and a chair in which to sit and youwatch through the window as the rain falls on the sidewalks outside? Or, behind the door stands a desk and behind that sits a clerk to whom you pay for a place to sleep on a cold night?

It all depends upon who you are, what you are looking for, or if that door is locked.