Bob Dylan, Desire and Wear Valley Writers.

It’s Wednesday evening and for the second time today I find myself thinking of the Wear Valley Writers* who always meet on Wednesdays at this time in Bishop Auckland Town Hall.

The first time I thought of them was earlier when I lay stretched out in the sun on the roof terrace with my i Pod listening to Bob Dylan’s album Desire, and was reminded of Jeff’s great workshop on writing song lyrics. He too is a Dylan fan.

 Desire seems to me to be the perfect Dylan album to play in the heat of the south (someone who knows more about music, Warren maybe, might tell me why? ) but I think it’s all those exotic names and that hot electric violin.

 I’ve been wondering what my Private Investigator, Danny Beck, might listen to – maybe jazz, but what? Sting, for sure. Definitely Bach – Sonatas for Cello and Piano played by Pablo Casals, which I am listening to as I write this, but not often because it makes him sad….oh… and I think he has a secret liking for Duffy too…

 I always want to know what music my characters listen to. It is important to know both the small and the significant things about the people you create beacuse that’s what brings them to life.

Here is a poem I am writing inspired by listening to Bob Dylan – its a work in progress.

                           Desire

                        …the way the room smells

                         of lemon and the chair creaks

                        above on the wide roof terrace,

                      -still afternoon when the children sleep

                      and silent streets run down

                      to the canal through the maze

                      of  unreality –

                      -in the living of another country

                   …the way the sun slips in

                    at the arrow slit in the old city

                   wall, falling across blue striped sheets,

                   bed too small, and never the time

                   before it was time to go

            …the way the swifts dance in the air

                above the roof and shutters close on

                the soft jazz of evening

                and Bob Dylan plays still

                in my ear-Desire’s violin,

                electric, hot

           … the way I see you smiling in the

              gardens and galleries of our pretensions

           ..the way I am here and you are not.

* Wear Valley Writers is a great writing group run with style, intelligence and wit by writer P J Walters. It offers only constructive criticism of work in progress and like any good writing group – it is a safe place in which to share your work and  it is full of good, talented writers too!