Sing a song

If I could sing - I'm sure I would have every now and then. But then I don't have the voice of a nightingale or anything remotely resembling it. I don't like talking out-loud quite often because my own voice sounds awful to me although strangers these days, every now and then, say that they wish they had a voice like mine - yes, sure.

The following songs, among others, have been playing in my head loudly for the last few days and I've been using them here and there. I like the Jason Mraz song in conjunction with the Nature Conservancy advertisement. I hadn't known earlier that Rudyard Kipling's 'If' had been made into a song and not just once. I'm not so sure about Joni Mitchell's version but it has a certain feel to it, which sort of grew on me. I don't know why she chose to change some of the words though I like the 'smug fool' bit. Roger Whittaker's version has been playing in my sleep sometimes (even though I disagree with a couple of lines and sometimes quietly and have reasons too...) - but maybe it's a call to keep the faith. Louis Macneice's Prayer before Birth and Rupert Brooke's Fafaia among others have been visiting me too and rather insistently (that is, either some specific lines or the sense of the different poems - pity I can't write music). The REM song I'll take the rain keeps re-visiting me, and has been for more than a decade. It has been visiting me more often in recent times. I think the music video touches something within me, with the soulful but matter-of-fact doggy in the crown, the ever-cheerful and enterprising raft, the big bird and the rest...which I hadn't seen before. It makes sense. And somehow a version of 'megh bolechey' seems to fit in with the REM song and the rest. The last song simply pushed its way in obstinately - I had nothing to do with it. Kishore too wants to get in with something but there it's 'O saathi re'. I actually went up to the mountains back in late March, this year, for some paid work which came up by accident and all of a sudden, and the piece 'Offering' and this piece 'O saathi re' kept playing in the midst of the mountains up North. No changes there, no matter whether it's thousands of miles west or east or up north or over to the south if not 'down by the coast': for 'you can never escape' and one doesn't want to actually (hence the Counting Crows song). A cynic or a smartie-pants or somebody with Asmiov's sense of wicked humour might say that's simply because the two songs are right next to one another on my music player. Bye-bye for now.