David Heavenor: Music

A song about getting out of the city with a friend and driving up into the wilder reaches of the West Coast of Scotland. At the time I was transfixed by Jackson Browne's song Fountain of Sorrow and reading Ring of Bright Water by Gavin Maxwell, the Scottish writer who used to live in a remote bay in that part of the world. (The ring of bright water image is from a poem by Kathleen Raine.) Around this time I was also writing some doggerel type poetry and prose which my friend Mike Cruickshank castigated - hence the first line.

HESITATION


A friend has been saying
My words are too dense
It frustrates me sometime
That he can’t see my sense
But I respect his opinion
He was a man rich and true
Through all of the dangers
When I didn’t know you

So what are you thinking
Am I word heavy to you
Am I just a wayfarer who’s got lost in his blues?
The evening is late
I won’t get complex and tied
I just want to say
You’re a beautiful child


Escape the town
We took the car
Your tapes stretch from playing
I watch the stars
You watch the miles
And every signpost fading
When Camusfearna lies so still
Jackson’s fountain of light
A ring of water so bright
Bursts like a lost dream
In my memory tonight


I want to reach to find you
But I tremble at the cost
If I built my world around you
I know I would be lost
You speak of love with hesitation
I feel a broken edge
It conjures up a mystery
Of some girl on a ledge

Now the birds are migrating
The frost spirit has come
And I am reminded of the death of a son
And these words spring up in me
And I’m born in love
And he is on my mind
But it’s you I’m thinking of


So I feel that I must answer
I feel I must explain
To make it more acceptable
You have to socialise the pain
But how do you douse a fire
When it rages wild within
I don’t know what I’m after
Am I trying to take you in?