"Goin' Out of My Head"

I was so excited about this section, and I'm having such trouble loving any of these songs. It occurs to me that they're also not represented at their best in this format, the arrangements on the piano reflect the time period in less complimentary ways. It would certainly be different to hear contemporary arrangements, or even arrangements for something other than piano.

I'm starting to hear Spring coming, in the sounds of the birds. Is it that their calls are different, at different times of day, or are these entirely different birds that I'm hearing at this time of year? The air smells different, too, some mornings, fresher, or cleaner.

Having grown up in the country, I wouldn't have thought that spring in an urban setting would be so clearly defined, still, by birds and earth-smells. It's very comforting that it is. I'm glad to live in such a relatively green city, where the birds and plants are abundant. And even on our small plot of land here, we manage to grow something of a garden in the summer. I'm hoping one of these years to get the composting-thing figured out. It's more complicated than I imagined as a kid, when my dad just threw everything in a heap at the back of the garden.

In 'Stiff' I'm reading about developments in human body composting. That sounds perfect for me. I've always had this vision--not gross in any way, it's my fantasy--of my body decomposing and its elements feeding a tree or a rose bush. Maybe by the time I'm through with this mortal shell the technology will be in place to have that happen.

I had to bring death into this somewhere, mortality being my recent obsession. In the long term, I'm thinking that it's better to embrace my obsessions, just let them have their run. Holding things back, exerting too much control over what I 'should' be thinking or feeling, it never seems to work for long. I am, indeed, going out of my head all over the place these days, it's not useful to give myself more fuel in terms of banked coals.