The dream consisted of me being lost in a large desert plain surrounded by high brown mountains like the Badlands in the US. I suddenly came across a large group of children who were also lost – children from all over the world. I suddenly out of the blue, started chanting in a language that was unfamiliar to me, the watcher of the dream. I was also clapping a pattern at the same time. The kids started to join in  with the chant and the clapping, and I lead them through the wilderness to safety, in a long line like the Pied Piper.

This was several years before I had done any singing with kids, or sung any song in any of the languages which I am often singing in these days – Swahili, Xhosa, Zulu, Yoruba, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Maori, Gaelic….it could have been one of these for sure.

I had this dream  a long time ago, a couple of years after I had left college and was trying to find my way in the big world. At the time I was a poor lowly songwriter, in a  horrible band, working in  a bar, cleaning people’s ovens to make ends meet, living in a crumbling shared house in Holloway (not the prison, but near), parents had split up, no family home to speak of, boyfriend had moved on, no prospects to speak of, lonely and down in the dumps. Now I look back and think it was almost like a sign of the future….maybe. Strange but true.

 SONG OF THE DAY – America  – Horse With No Name

It is not that I am running out of ideas, as yesterday’s and today’s songs have been posted before, but the images of this song go with the dream, and I just have a really soft spot forthis song, even though I would  probably never consciously put it on the 21st century turntable…I think it’s the harmonies in the chorus , the guitar and the sense of atmosphere and space, which reminds me, must pick up my guitar today. It won’t hurt to hear it again. x x x