I’m sitting, last night, on the front steps of my London flat writing a song… not completely… but the beginnings of one. The sky is gray and there’s a tiny chill in the air, the whisper of a chill. Like I don’t want to stray too far from home… lest it seeps insidiously into my bones, dragging hypothermia with it. I don’t wander. I sit.

I’m leaning, with my new black Takamine guitar, against the frame of the stoop, against the forest green and white flowered tiles, perched on the cold mossy step and the sky darkens to the most fierce and glorious blue. I’m singing up at the sky, cracking my loneliness away and sending it up to the sky. Sometimes freedom feels so cold. The sky is wild blue solitary and the red brick of the ancient London townhouses deepens and I can see the lightbulbs as they buzz their orange light on the curious neighbours as they peer through their curtains to see what this unfamiliar sound is that is complimenting their evenings with their families.

Neighbours come out of their front doors onto the twilight street and stop and smile and stare and ask me “Why?”. Some stop to listen and listen as I plunk away on my guitar working out the melody I want to sing, shaving away the excess notes to find the most beautiful melody as Michaelangelo with a lump of stone.

Inspiration is like a drug. Like heroin. “I can’t write without it, man.” but that is just a soppy lie, its not a wild flash of inspiration that causes writing, its the sitting down with a pen or the keyboard and moving hand and finger. That’s how you write. That’s all. There is no secret. You sit down and type or scrawl. And you focus on what your experience is and describe it. You pay attention, you listen, smell, hear, feel and then you let words come out to communicate what the experience is. There’s nothing fancy about it, nothing glorious, no magic alchemy to divine, there are not some of us writers and some not. If you have senses, a sensual interaction with the world, you can write.

I am here now promising to write everyday. To blog everyday until I get home. Then… well? …then I’ll make another promise. And so my life will go from promise to promise.

“You could say I’m hard to hold, but if you knew me you’d know I’ve got a [good mother] and her strength is what makes me cry.” ~Jann Arden

“I’ve never wanted anything, no I’ve never wanted anything so bad.” ~Jann Arden

I’ve been in London for a week and a half now and I’m learning and growing so much in so many ways! I am going to play my guitar in the park soon. Its a lovely sunny Summer London day.

Being here, in the city, feeling like I’m wandering through the scenes of a movie, I have the experience that the world is very very small. London, New York… anywhere is possible. That is a beautiful thing.

I’m excited about the uncertainty of what the next year holds for me and I’m thrilled that I get to create for my life any way I want to. I know where I’ll be living until the end of the year and I know that music is my life… beyond that? The Universe is at my fingertips.

We are coming down the homestretch of 2009; the year of the artist for me. And it certainly has been that! What is 2010 promising? the year of the creator? we’ll see, but what I do know is I am enthralled with the prospect of being the cause of it all. I am dancing with the notion that its all up to me and it brings tears of possibility to my eyes that caress my heart with wonder and anticipation in a breakthrough way… I have finally found the keys to the kingdom and they’ve been in my hands all along.

“While you’re wondering ‘How’s this going to end?” I only want it begin.” ~Ben Lee