I sang this song live and acoustic for a lunch time recital last week. I won't subject you to a version of me singing it.

Having spent hours listening to it, trying to find a key where I could sing the whole range, and practising it endlessly, I think I still like it.

But what's it about!?

It seems it's a fairly mixed, messed up and damaging journey, including trying and failing, but ultimately somehow still singing, albeit with eyes open.

​I wonder if we get to the point where we're wrecked we can still sing?

Every song I've had in this series so far I think I actually like.
This one I don't. I've tried, but it just isn't doing anything for me.
It'll work as a Eurovision entry, but It's not going to be one I'll listen to on repeat personally.

I do like the idea of taking the negative and channeling it into something creative rather than destructive though.
Think there is something to be said for still calling out the things that are wrong but doing so in a way that isn't just cussing people out outside the house, trashing things, etc, nor is it sitting in silence wallowing and pretending it didn't happen.

What do we need to call out, and how can we do it productively?
How do we rise above and challenge things without stooping to their level?

You get the idea... I've listened to it and reflected so you don't have to. But it might be your thing, so listen if you want to.

This one was another "I know that voice..." moment.
It just goes to show that when algorithms work they'll point you to voices that you know and appreciate!

I am looking forward to this album. The two tracks I've heard so far I have really liked.

This one speaks to where I am right now, and where the future might lead... I can't work out whether this song ends with the outcome I want it to or not though! At the very least I feel like there's a commitment to making it work.

What do you think?

Ever have one of those moments where you start listening to a song and you kind of recognise the voice but it just doesn't quite fit with the music you're hearing?

My friend Sarah introduced me to the Arctic Monkeys way back when she got their first album "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" before they properly made it big. And then I kept up with them into the second album, but after that they drifted off my radar.

Coming back into listening in 2022 with "The Car" I realised I'd missed a lot. There was a whole musical journey that had gone on in the four albums in between! The voice was the same, but the rest of it left me thinking that I ain't quite where I think I am!

Anti-heroes are complicated and misunderstood... And I find them fascinating!
Are they heroes?
Don't they kind of look a lot like the villain?
Do the ends really justify the means?

A while ago I did a podcast with a friend of mine thinking about the "Black Adam" film and theology, and I talked a bit about anti-heroes there.

But what about me?

Doddie Weir was retiring from Rugby when I started paying an interest in it. He's been more on my radar since he retired and since his MND diagnosis than he was before.

The tune of "Doddie's Dream" apparently was written without him in mind, but thinking about hope in 2020, and that we all needed a little hope. Doddie was someone who was bringing people hope through his charity and so it was later given his name.

There's a degree of pressure on us when we do that.

To “hold a mirror up to" is a phrase meaning “to take a look at oneself objectively to examine or reflect on things (issues) stemming from the reality of reflection; to reveal to someone about the way they look (differently) to the rest of the world (so that they can reflect upon themselves); expose, show up, bring to light (some (unpleasant) aspects to oneself)”.

Community done badly holds up images of the ideal alongside the mirror and tells us all the ways we don't measure up.

They say that ignorance is bliss.

Sometimes we'd rather close our eyes and have everything go away.

Perhaps if we sleep things will be better when we wake. Someone will have magically fixed the problem.

I guess this song just draws together the thoughts that I've already had with "Bridge over troubled water" and "Eyes of a child".

Human kind has been on a journey round light:
We sat round a fire and told stories as communities and clans;
We moved indoors and read stories around the fireplace, or listened to them on the radio;
The radio got replaced by the television and we continued to have less responsibility in telling the story, though we were all still pointing in the same direction;
Nowadays the TV is still in the corner of the living room, and the seats still point towards it, and it ever continues to burn out a light and tell stories, but whilst it tells its stories I tune it out and disappear into the light of the screen in my hand. It tells stories, paints pictures and shows things to me. I experience them alone, along with millions of other people, and occasionally I send them to other people on social media so that they too can enjoy them alone.

Now this is something I wrestle with a lot as I do assemblies in schools and work with young people.

I'm acutely aware of the world that I have inherited from my elders, the good, the bad and the ugly of it. And I'm increasingly deliberate in not wanting to just pass the buck of responsibility for changing it to those I work with.