The song I borrowed from Lyndsey Scott

These aren't the drawings that gave me the song, they remain displaced, though in a world where one loses so much (in a basement where I bury so much), I am content to have retrieved the song.

I came up with the song by translating drawings by Lyndsey Scott into words. Here are the words:

I left a traffic cemetery, owls on my money
I left a traffic cemetery, elephants on my head

We don't know where we're going, though we're always growing
Every neck is a tendril, every head is a seed

She said, "You must come as a child.
Or come as a blanket when the winter is mild."

The highway is a serpent, every migrant is an alien
The highway is a servant, it's a river of dust

She said, "You must come as a child.
Or come as a blanket when the winter is mild.
Come in from the wild.
Baby, come as a child."

The drawings came in the mail unexpectedly, not long before New Year's Day 2007, as I found myself remembering on New Year's Day 2009. There were quite a lot of wonderful little things in that care package - this is a fecund artist.

These particular drawings, the ones that gave me the song, were fashioned into a little book, as I recall, and no doubt were curated into some microcollection of handmade books that has gone into hiding somewhere in my basement.

But the song is back, I taught it to my guitar again this weekend, and I will play it for Lyndsey tomorrow night at the guitar circle.