the folk singer

After eight days on the road, I have returned home to my kitchen where the scents are familiar like an old photograph of a friend you haven't seen around lately. This has been the last two weeks of my life which is why I have neglected to post here or respond to emails in an honorable manner. We took ourselves on tour and played our songs in little Alberta towns. Every single perimeter of land we touched or person we talked to made it so we were encouraged and educated in our travels. I never thought in my pea shell of a lifetime, I would travel in a van with instruments in tow to sing songs into microphones where people sit and listen. Music, music, music, it can certainly give you reasons for a bellyache — not being able to sleep in your own bed, hot baths no longer within reach, not knowing if anybody will even like your music, you have to deal with drunks and loud talkers, you have to meet strangers every night, you eat foods foreign to the tongue and if you're a lover of solitude like I am, the time for solitude has to wait. 

Music, music, music, it also has a garden bed of joys and I believe my life to be greater because of it. I don't know if I will ever find something that makes me feel so alive as opening my mouth to sing and using my hands to make noise with the strings. I could have died a long time ago, I could have kept myself from buying a banjo, but I didn't. I am always one foot in the classroom and one foot in the playground with this gift I found in music making — this gift is out there waiting for you too, if you want to reach for it, but sometimes in the reaching, you pull your arm too hard or end up in soggy tears. This is all a part of music's wild plan. You have to climb, but for every inch, there is a song you get to sing to babies, to friends, or on the edge of your bed, which is where a grave is built for every worry, and a cradle for every note.

 

 Now that I am home again, I drink my coffee a little slower and look for the winter chickadees who search through the bird feeder on our may tree. After the noise of tires rolling across pavement and guitars ringing out, it is a sweet reminder that home still remains and it was here where these songs were first sung.

outfit details: keiko lynn dress, free people boots, crown and glory floral crown

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