The Bauble
Photo of a red glittery bauble hanging from a branch of a tree.
This story begins with some fingers flicking this bauble back and forth through the air. Flick-flick, flick-flick, imagine the bauble swinging there like a pendulum; flick-flick, flick-flick, a sparkly metronome in time. When the bauble swings, it passes over invisible strings which call out in song in another dimension. Strings so clustered, that even a micrometer difference in direction results in a profoundly different tune.
In that other dimension, music is the intelligent life form. Songs roam about in the air the way sunlight and shadows do here. In that dimension, the strings of existence are strummed by wind or rain and this is what causes procreation. Natural processes pass over the strings and give birth to song after song after song. Songs who roam that dimension, creating choruses and clustering in the sky the way starlings call and murmur here.
Flick-flick, flick-flick. As the bauble passes over the strings in that other dimension, the songs hitch rides back into this one. Adventurous songs, the ones seeking new audiences and experiences, flow into the bauble to make their way to a new home. It helps if you cup your hands about the bauble after you have finished flicking. This is both to still its swinging, and thus end its inter-dimensional propagation, and also to make it easier for the song to flow into you. If you are gentle and receptive enough, you will later be able to birth this great new song on the piano or guitar or both.
The more porous and (dare I say it) rough and raggedy your edges are, the easier it will be for the song to find its way into you. So, it’s best not to be too composed or uptight when you go to West Blean to visit the bauble. It’s far better to be a little chaotic and confused, to have gaps around your edges, to leave your hair and your spirit unbrushed. Let your eyes have a commensurate glitter and a large amount of hope before you flick-flick, flick-flick the red glitter.
If the song can’t find its way into you, the musical being will instead wander this earth looking for a good place to settle. The longer it takes to find a receptive being, the shorter the song will end up. This is why pop songs are only two or three minutes long nowadays: it takes the songs such a long time to find a musician, as people spend most of their time indoors. Sometimes the song will never find a human and they become so small that they turn into the impression of a song: a few notes of a hum, or like when you look at a field of daffodils bobbing in the breeze and could swear there was a bell inside every one.
Birds are especially open to music, and will gobble the song-being right up if they find it. This is why bird song is so great in Kent, being as it is the home of the bauble. The birds wait in the trees and the hedges for the song to wander through before they snap it up like a morning worm. The great raptors circle in the skies looking for the larger and more robust songs. Each bird has its own preference for song type, or so I’m told.
What songs have you? Are you ripe for some singing? Do you rub your finger and thumb tips together in anticipation of your flicking? Would you like a window in your heart thrust open with a strange, inter-dimensional musical alien sat there proclaiming your life in song? I know I do, I do. I know I want song. I know I am singing.
I sat there that day with my fingers flicking-flicking, ready to see who would come home with me. Waiting to see what new notes I would know. Anticipating the touch of tiny fingertips on my heart, pressing me like a piano. And I have it my song, my song, and I sang it free, so free. Now my heart is waiting open for the next one to come settle, settle. For them to see, to see me.
Flick-flick, flick-flick, come measure your spirit with the bauble. Come find your song. Come with your broken edges so that they can be mended by singing, by music, by song.