24th October 2007

We watched a wonderful film called 'Once'. Your Mum says the guys reminds her of me. I cant see that really myself. Similar songwriting style I guess. Its about an Irish busker caught in a rut. A girl comes along and helps him to get out of his funk and start living his dream. It’s a heartbreaking movie but if it ends up that you don’t write songs yourself, this movie will definitely help explain what it feels like to write one, I totally associated with the imagery. When you write a song you do often hear the arrangement in your head. I have been writing songs since I was about 16 or 15 from memory. I would have forgotten or lost the tapes of many of them over the years. But I don’t think you should hold on to old work anyway, its like keeping a pair or pants that you don’t fit into anymore and they have a split in the back anyway. It was very organic how I started writing. I learnt the basic guitar, listened to lots of songs and started strumming them. Eventually I think I just started putting music to my poems which I was writing a lot of. Your Mum reckons I would mimic whoever I was into at the time and it wasn’t until a few years ago or even less that she felt that I was making my own sound. Now I am very proud of the fact that I really don’t sound like anyone else. I can not imagine someone covering many of my songs and I still can’t figure out how a band could arrange them. I have this fantasy that I have written to a heap of big producers and set them a challenge to record my music.

It also makes me think about how I will approach your learning new skills. I doubt that I will be very lenient with you regarding giving up on things. I will try to keep check on that. Its my feeling that it takes years to build up skills in things so the sooner you start the happier you will be when you hit your late 20's and will actually start reaping the benefits. I think I will push for your learning a language right away, a musical instrument, a sport, writing stories, art at home and exploring a science together. It really comes down more to us than you in making this happen. This is all idealism I know and the reality may prove vastly different. But then I always love challenging that belief. I think consistency enables these things to be actualised.