Word of the Week - Words

It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that words are very important to me. I have loved reading and writing for most of my life and spent many happy hours as a child making up and telling stories. More recently I have begun to take my writing more seriously and even dipped my toe into the dangerous waters of calling myself a writer. So words are the toolkit that I use everyday to tell the stories that crowd my mind. Words are also the vehicles I use to transport myself to other worlds through the writing of others.

I am once again taking part in NaNoWriMo this year and things have been going surprisingly well.
The words are flowing and I am really enjoying telling my story, even though it has sprung from a genre that I don't usually write. It's a bit of a fantasy novel - not The Hobbit but there are bits that have their feet firmly in the fantasy camp. I'm enjoying writing something so different and at times using words in a slightly different way - some of my characters have an idiosyncratic way of speaking!

But today I am thinking about words in the light of the death of Leonard Cohen. He used words in a way that I can only dream of. I was introduced to the music of Leonard Cohen by my friend Alison at college. I was into 1970's pop music and David Bowie, she was into Leonard Cohen and John Martyn, artists I had not heard of or listened to. As our friendship developed we listened to each others music and I learned to love Leonard Cohen for his poetry and the smoky quality of his voice. Today I am sad that he has left us but so happy that I have the wonderful songs and poems he left behind. On the radio someone compared his lyrics to Yeats and that pleased me greatly. I am a huge fan of Yeats and read his words regularly. Both Yeats and Leonard Cohen use language in a way that draws me in, challenges me and sometimes makes me weep.

So today I shed a tear for the passing of a great poet, a weaver of words and a thoughtful human being. The world is a poorer place for his leaving it but there is a wonderful concert starting in heaven as he joins the other legends we lost this year.