Tree and Swash

Put your dreams away for now
I won’t see you for some time
I am lost in my mind
I get lost in my mind…

This weekend, I retreated to the coast to hone my writing, off to Cape Lookout with a tent and notebooks and cameras and a flask of scotch. Writing is something that I find I have to be settled into, letting the words and ideas bottleneck in my brain until they overflow onto paper. Until then, it’s just thinking and procrastinating. And there are not many better ways to do this than grabbing the cameras and going for a hike on a lonely, gloomy stretch of beach in November. Here there aren’t many features other than the lovely ocean to stare into. But I was charmed by the very weatherbeaten trees and the patterns of swash made by pigmented sand, wind, and rain that combine to create cataclysms and cosmic bubbles; strange creatures swimming through your vision and otherworldly landscapes to peer into. Come back to good scotch around a toasty campfire and then you’re ready to start writing. Or maybe that’s just the fun way…

When your love rains down just like diamonds all around
Strange and changing sound, transformation in the ground
A great and winding tree splits the Earth from sea to sea…

 

I wanna take you in the kitchen
Lift up your wedding dress someone was probably murdered in…

Blooming up from the ground
Three rounds and a sound
Like whispering “you know me”
You know me…

It must be winter in my heart
There’s nothing warm in there at all
I miss the summer and spring
The floating, yellow leaves of fall…

Here’s to the lone and wayward sun,
For to love is to leave
For to run like a rolling stone
I fell in with men who were wicked in the end
As we roam by and by so these crimes multiply…

You got a lot of lovers with star-crossed wrists
They keep a candle burning on the corner you kissed.
One day I might die, until then there’s too much to do
But I’ll keep a bonfire for you…

Oh ’cause the story I heard is that people are bored
And the measures you take to wrestle with your lord
All the money you take
All the memories you spill
Will he measure your tongue
Will he measure your will…

So if this was a writing retreat, where are the words? Stay tuned…

 

On the iPod: Lost in My Mind, The Head and the Heart; The Tree, Blitzen Trapper; Chateau Lobby #4, Father John Misty; Three Rounds and a Sound, Blind Pilot; Winter in My Heart, Avett Brothers; Destroyer of the Void, Blitzen Trapper; Bonfire, Josh Ritter; The Story I Heard, Blind Pilot… What can I say? It was a good weekend for folk music.