Reaching for the Same Packet

I’ve just finished reading Everything I know about Love by Dolly Alderton (paid link). She’s a funny and perceptive writer, who gives a remarkably honest account of her life. This is not an SF book, in fact it’s the opposite of SF. Part of the pleasure of reading a book like this is the insight into another life…

… although I occasionally thought that her struggles sometimes resembled a journey to the shops through a swamp and an artillery range when there was a perfectly good bus running from the end of the street. She never seemed to take the trouble to read the timetable. But I’m sure we all sometimes go the long way round in our lives to discover truths that are obvious to others.

What really struck me, though, was what we had in common.

We both love Joni Mitchell and John Martyn. I think we’re very different people, but we were both drawn to something in their music. It makes me think of two people on opposite aisles reaching for the same packet on a supermarket shelf.

Joni Mitchell’s lyrics exist in CD booklets and liner notes, they’re on the internet (here’s an example of a writers song if there ever was one) but, great as they are, those lyrics are dead until people read them and breathe their own lives into them.

All writing is the same.