The Journey Of A Song

The Journey Of A Song

By Paul McCann

The first time I discovered songs presenting themselves to me was as a child growing up in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It was like discovering I had a juke box inside my head. 

I wasn’t yet a teenager when the troubles arrived in 1968 and everything changed overnight with rioting and gun battles on the street. They were difficult times and my family, and I emigrated to Australia in 1072 to Sydney, Australia. After we had settled in a new country music and songs returned into my life and began to  hear melodies in my head . This time there were lyrics attached , mostly I around eight bars which was the beginnings of a song that required work to finish them .

Not having done any advanced literacy courses or having no classical training with  music it was a hard road trying to compose songs however I stumbled through the meadows of my mind to a place where I wrote some songs and began to record those on cassette tapes .

Those early songs were part of my journey in life . I was single without any ties and was able to give a lot of my free time to writing songs . They came to me at any time of the day or night when I was at work or at home and even when I was sleeping . I would wake up in the middle of the night with a song in my head and record that before going back to sleep .

I spent a lot of time walking in the early 1980’s and started jogging before and after work every day and during that activity I always had ideas about a new song that I had to write . The songs always made their way to me like letters through a cosmic mailbox in the sky or on through some open window of a studio in a room beyond the sky or on a train through ghost tunnels in the clouds . They were gifted to me and their arrival time was never known but when they came, I was there and embraced each one before being charged with the energy to commence work on them . I recall a few moments that really grounded me to find motivation with what I was doing with my songwriting . 

It was winter and I stood at this bus stop in London waiting to get the last bus home to where I was staying in Hackney and for some unknown  reason I had missed the last bus so I began to walk having no idea of where I was or how to get to that part of  East London . That is where for the first time I somehow knew where to go and kept walking to the place where I was meant to be going .

I can still remember walking through the darkness of the night through the streets of London to areas I’d never been before . Something inside told me to keep on going .

strangely enough somehow, I made it back to where I was staying in Athlone Close .

Mind blowing stuff , how can anyone explain that ?

Another time when I was travelling in Ireland on a coach from Cork to Belfast the driver stopped in Birr and we were told to have a break and stretch out legs . When I returned to the place where the coach had been parked it had already left and once again, I had to make my own way to where I was meant to be without any road map     to help me get there and once again, I was able to get to where I was going . 

These moments told me something about finding my way and I saw a parallell between that and the journey of a song that somehow finds us at the right moment in our lives to the time and place where we are .

I believe that songs have been chosen to be found when the time is right and in that  moment that’s when they are discovered and written and recorded .

They too have been on a journey from someplace to make their own way into the world . Songs have been gifted to us  They have a spiritual message or they bring an experience to help us through some hard times or help us to celebrate special times in our lives . There will always be people who accept that or reject that .

 Some might even not be interested in that of try to ignore the song that was meant for them . Others may even try to interfere with the song being shared or heard for whatever the reason but there is a time and a place when that song will  eventually find a way to get to where it was meant to be . 

.Songs are a cry from the heart that found its way there from a spiritual place where they float like clouds , unperplexed and relaxed and free to just keep drifting away until find the fertile hills that were the foundations were laid for brave new homes to be built on the edge of reality . That was where originally came from , that is where harmony became a village for the very first singers and songwriters to find the freedom to compose and make songs come to life .

There on those fertile hills trees grew from the seeds of love and the fruit that grew I those trees were songs .  I am just one of those who had found those song trees and was able to pick the fruit as often as I pleased to take home and try to share those.

with other people who were standing with me or against me or even blocking my way but as often as I could I stood there in front of a microphone to sing and record the music of what happens .

With some improvising and the help of other musicians the vision that became a song started a new journey to be heard by others around the world on some of today’s digital music platforms . I have no control over where those songs will go or who would listen to them but they are now still on a journey of their own  .

Forty years later I am still visited by melodies and still like to try to bring them to life. They come like unspoken words to let me know , it’s time to follow on and walk through the meadows of the mind with the little tune in my head because there is a place it needs to go and it requires some help to get there . Like a bird that whistles as it builds a nest . like a tune that can carry itself and a story without an ending , they’re two best friends that need people to listen to them and even sing with them .

Some songs have found professional singers ,who decided  to give them a try . Some songs found a big hall where people danced to the beat and melody they were given . Other songs became popular as ballads or were played in gentle intimate surroundings by  lovers who embraced special moments together . Some songs were unaccompanied; others were instrumentals without words. Some songs were marching songs; other songs were welcomed by unruly crowds.or sung in church by choral societies . At the end of each journey will find the palace it was meant to be and appreciated by those who were meant to hear . If the people can applaud after each song is sung the song has achieved its purpose and also won over the hearts of people who has listened where it had appeared .

There are still many songs waiting to be heard or written ..Some songs will be popular while others will not be liked .

We all will decide our own favourite songs.

For me as a songwriter I need to keep trying to write and record the songs that came my way hoping that sooner or later people will listen and enjoy the song I wrote .

Life is the heartbeat of a song that came into my heart ..  

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The End