Isn’t that something we’re all doing in one way or another?
Is happiness the same as fulfillment or are they just related?
I find my happiness in love, my partner, family, creativity (writing, photographing), nature, travel, music, reading, good food and wine, and sharing with friends.
I found this blog post worth reading:
In search of happiness – One Positive Blog (monepositiveblog.com)
They started something special!! Great to be there at the beginning.
I was only a kid when those early Donovan albums came out. He introduced me to the greats of Buffy St Marie and Bert Jansch.
Fairy Tale was a great album with quite a range.
A Record
Albums sit in neat rows on shelves,
Antiques,
Full of memories from long ago,
Rarely touched.
In cover photos
Groups of young men
Pose
In sexy clothes
Trying to look mean.
Now fat, bald grandpas.
Images of
Old bluesmen
Stare,
Clutching national steels,
Eyes full
Of experience.
Now long dead.
Vinyl discs,
Laden with clicks and hisses,
Atmosphere and warmth,
Transport us to nights
When the air throbbed,
The beat pounded,
As the blood rushed through arteries,
Ears rung
And neurones fired.
Each album
Brought home on a wave of euphoria,
With bated expectation,
Held gently,
Delicately inspected,
A precious artefact
To be revered
Played and intently listened too,
Focussed on
Every note absorbed,
Every word analysed.
Liner notes no longer pawed over,
Interpreted or scanned for clues.
Replaced by wiki where all and more is available
At the touch of a finger.
Now reduced to the status of trite historic documents,
Well-worn words,
Now stale and pretentious,
Robbed of their nascent wonder.
Albums sit on dusty shelves
Untouched.
Opher – 6.2.2022
I find it hard to believe that many of these albums are now 60 years old.
Music was so much more than music. It was a discovery, a sharing of social intent, a sharing of ideals.
Music informed.
Music was the most important thing of all.
Music was our culture.
A Soundtrack
There’s a soundtrack to my life,
Illustrating my feelings,
Feeding my mind,
Nourishing my spirit.
A soundtrack to love.
A background to work.
It is the music,
Intertwined with memories,
That gives colour,
Awakens emotions,
Stokes the fires inside,
To bring me fully alive.
That soundtrack contains my essence.
Opher – 2.1.2020
As I have grown up music has played a huge role in my development. The lyrics, the poems, the sounds, have entered into me, expanding my vision, intensifying my experience.
Now, when I hear a certain track, it conjures up memories, feelings and thoughts.
Music is inextricably linked to my life and inner being.
My Life is a Poem
My life is a poem
In touch with the mysteries
Stumbling through the bizarre.
Uncertain of every touch.
Trying to understand
The entwining histories
From the strings of a guitar
That I have felt too much.
Opher 4.1.2022
Music and poetry make more sense to me than anything else.
Life’s a mystery.
There are no answers.
Live to the max and ignore everyone who is sure.
Music makes you think.
Poetry makes you think.
Roy Harper, Bob Dylan and Don Van Vliet make sense to me.
A River of Music
There’s a river of music
Flowing through our minds
Connecting us.
With tendrils of sound,
Rivulets of notes,
Waterfalls of words,
Joining us,
To create a an orchestra
Of unification.
As our spirits sing together
The melody becomes a spectrum
Of all our experience;
Of love, hate and anger,
Spirituality and ideals,
Entwined with politics
And freedom.
Within the harmony
Lies the gamut of emotion,
A lexicon of thought,
And descant of feeling.
The whole universe
Cascades in a symphony
To a sea
Of intimate meaning,
An ocean of oneness,
That is the music
Of life.
Opher – 17.8.2019
I find music sustaining. It expresses every thought and emotion I feel, crosses cultures and speaks directly to the spirit within.
It is the most ancient and fundamental aspect of humanity.
Anyone who denies music denies life.
I have such fond memories of this band. They exemplified the 60s for me!!
Killing the Taliban
I’m busy killing the Taliban
With my dancing and my song.
Causing their destruction
I don’t think it’ll take too long.
They’ve come out of the Dark Ages
With their joyless cult of death.
We’re fighting their misogyny
With all our hearts and breath.
There’s a misery surrounding them
With their brainwashed ideology.
They live for death; we live for life
And the love of being free.
So with our instruments of love
We’ll play our symphony
And waken the joys of life
From their stone-cold misery.
They made the mistake of thinking
Their god hates music and song;
That women are all second class;
How could they have got it all so wrong?
So with the magic of our strings
And the beauty of our voice
We’ll sing a song of love
That’ll make their hearts rejoice.
So I’m killing the Taliban today
I’m dancing as I sing.
They’ll throw their joyless book away
And let freedom ring!
Opher – 15.5.2019
What kind of miserable death cult is it that kills people for singing and dancing?
What kind of doctrine is it that squanders the wonder of their own lives and seeks to put an end to pleasure?
What kind of cult is this that seeks to live in the past? That thinks stoning is an apt punishment and women are inferior?
I think the human spirit is vital and alive. It knows that song and dance are not crimes.
You defeat such a brainwashed cult by showing them a better way.
Instead of following some hollow words from the Dark Ages we can come together to celebrate, women and men, children and the old, – there’s the treasure.
You kill a wicked, warped ideology with something better.
We’ll play a happy song to prove that they are wrong.
A whole series of fabulous albums. Such a loss.