Diary

The song I'm learning, "I wonder (Departure)" is about a young woman from a small conventional town who has the chance the chance to leave the safety of her upbringing and its predictable expectations, and go and take the opportunity to live her dream.

She's afraid. She doesn't know what to do.

But by the end of the song she has found her courage and goes to pursue her dream.

One of the things I love about the song is that it's apparently very simple but describes a very complicated moment. And it's very specific, but at the same time allows the listener or singer to apply the story to herself.

So I could take it, for instance, to be about the moment when I could finally live as a woman but hesitated, frightened, tempted back to my old much safer life as a man.

The woman of the song finds herself drawn back to the idea of getting married, settling down and having children... and singing it reminds me of the time when I was young and such a conventional life actually seemed impossible t me.

And yet how I could have gone into academia, for instance, and yet destroyed the possibility by walking away from my PhD for seven years. Feeling that the conventional path was abosolutely not for me.

It was something to do with wanting to live as a woman, and the feeling I had that that was something sick and horrible; and the feeling I had that I was a writer and that that had to take priority.

And yet somehow it's all been given back to me. I did get married, I did have children, and my family are such a source of joy. And I did become a university professor. And I did become a writer.

And now I live as a woman...

And I'm not at all sure I'd have become aware of that in as clear a way without the experience of trying the sing the song.

Life is miraculous. And so is music...