When things are difficult, turn to what calls you home to yourself. For me, music calls me home. The song Mingulay reminds me of when I journeyed to the Outer Hebrides in 1997, because of Scottish harp music. I went to a windy island called Barra. The kind of place where if you can’t play a clarsach, the Gaelic word for harp, the wind off the sea can play it for you.
The video is a clip of me holding my small harp up to play the wind on a very stormy day in Tennessee. In the spring of 2003 I realized I needed to leave a bad situation, and chose to come home to Georgia. I was being kicked out of someone else’s promises. I wasn’t about to stay and let them have anything more to do with my life. The trust was gone.
But not the trust I have in the home in me. And of me. It’s good to be home.
The automatic transcript is full of errors. But I will leave it as it is. Because the last line is a perfect poem. I didn’t prompt it. The song told what should be written.
I will anchor, e'er the song says,
I'll lift my name.
Hear me alone.
Thank you.
