The Promise

When I bought Springsteen's The Darkness on the Edge of Town I was about 12. Born in the USA had just come out, I was in love with his sound and wanted to hear more. I actually bought the album from my pocket money at my parents' book club, and could not wait to get home and play it.
Darkness was quite a different album. Dark (duhh!) gloomy, rough. Not something an early teen would normally listen to. But I loved it, even if I had no idea what Candy was doing inviting so many boys to her room... ;) Gradually I learned English listening to Springsteen albums, dictionary in hand to figure out line by line what he meant.

Today, Tye bought me a copy of The Promise - 21 newly released recordings from the Darkness session. It's all those songs that didn't make it to the album, or slightly different versions of songs that did make it. It's so strange, to hear familiar lines used in other songs, or combined with ones that I haven't heard before. It's like they're brand new and I'm 12 years old again, trying to figure out what it all means.

And Clarence's sax still makes me cry.

Life

And then, Tye's Nan passed away. And there was the arranging of the funeral that was to be held about an hours drive away from where we live, and the emptying of her home, and all the emotions that come with dealing with things like that.

And then there were health problems. Nothing too serious, but serious enough to go see my GP. And then there was the being oh-so tired, partly due to new meds, partly due to all the emotions coming out.

And then... there was new life. Two brand new nephews, born this Monday. Meet Alfie in blue and Finley in yellow:

They are still in hospital, they were born via c-section and Finley is jaundiced, but that's all being taken care of. Hopefully they should be home this weekend.

And hopefully, my creative spark will come back and I'll finally do something other than gessoing pages only to leave them white because I just don't have the 'oompf' to do anything else...