Honestly I dunno what it is but I just need to get ‘dogs’ out of my system, and I promise this is the last mention of them on the blog for a while.
Maybe its because I did my growing up listening to Nick Drake, whose song ‘a black eyed dog’ is a terrifying lament to depression.
I found that black eyed dog at my door after I came back from living in Ethiopia.
My work in Ethiopia, leading a team of radio producers making programmes about sexual and reproductive health, was the toughest I’ve ever taken on.¬† At the end of a long, long day one of my solaces was to crash on the sofa, cuckooned under a rug that travels everywhere with me, and listen to a song by Josh Ritter called Girl In the War. A song that never failed to move me until the black dog came to stay, when nothing touched me.
‘Anyway I dunno how it was for you but there was this moment when suddenly I noticed the dog had taken what he needed and moved on. It happened during a euphoric Josh Ritter gig in Birmingham.¬† Someone turned the colours back on.
It’s 2.a.m. in the morning (again).¬† Sleeping downstairs is the girl in the war who got me through:
‘I got a girl in the war, Paul her eyes are like champagne
They sparkle, bubble over, in the morning all you got is rain’
Related posts:
