To Sing The Light Fantastic

    Laura Botsford

   I wasn’t a very quite child by nature. I talked a lot, and thought everyone should listen to me. I thought that it was expected of me to keep the conversation going, or maybe  I was a little to precocious to know any better. Fortunately for me I believed in everything I said and felt confident in expressing myself. Oftentimes I emulated the best of my made up characters from my imagination; trying on personalities like hats. I was creating myself from plays, and movies that I admired; I was the song that I  wrote on, inventing harmonies for the present moments I found myself in. I always sang. That was who I liked being best of all. Life was a musical, and when it wasn’t, I was bored, detached from who I really was. It was a more than a pastime; it was a state of being.

    And all my favorite, invisible friends gathered in the basement just to hear me sing.  Looking back on this, I can see all the room aglow with inspiration. Performances were born out of this sweet spot. Incandescent lights appeared calling me to sing to them. I sang with heroic exuberance. In that basement I found my concert space and I  was content in knowing what I wanted to be when I grew up. Now to get there was a different matter. All roads carry turning points, filled with lessons if we stay awake and embrace them openly. I was a vast sea of ideas without a map. There were things I saw around me that were illuminated by songs. Patience my dear for the sound is a treasure somewhere in the sands of your timeless soul. If you feel the rhythm then you will find your way.

   Halley’s Comet last appeared in the inner Solar System in 1986 and will next appear in mid-2061. Seventy Five years between gigs. Songs travel without time, they are buried in the sand, on the doorsteps of  relationships, good and hard times and in dreams. They are found in newspapers and paintings; maybe just a melody that is a wisp of a phrase. They move in and take over, like a hunger or a voice you can’t get out of your head. The nature of a song is in the very breath of Spirit and most times takes up collection from the depths of ones soul.

   The heart of a song is in the mist and silence is the only way to catch it as it streaks by. A good song tells a story, it weaves a spell, it tells the truth, it inspires and can change one’s life forever. Some songs are prayers while others are celebrations, and always a song seeks to sing the light fantastic, from it’s own timeless place.