The idea of home…

Sunday Blog 47 – 31st July 2022

It’s Sunday morning in a Wheatbelt town and we’re closing out a Song Writing Retreat with a voice lesson in the church next to the Quindanning Hotel. The acoustics are amazing. We are doing vocal warm-ups, just singing sounds but no words. The magic that comes from voices joined overtakes me and the shivers start.

Then we start singing the word “Home” our voices swirling around in harmonies and my voice thickens until I can’t sing.

Home. My house and darling husband. A sudden piercing yearning to be home.

Home. My childhood home and how I had to leave it in order to become a fully realised adult.

Home. My adult daughter still at home – just – but moving on at some time in the next six months or so.

Home.

For ten years I lived in Europe and wondered where is my home? But I’ve been back two decades and the thought of living anywhere other than Australia is now foreign. But still, the song lines of Europe are so strong.

Whenever I stay I always make my hotel bed room so it is always inviting and ready for the Muse. I thank my hotel room before leaving it for good. My Quindanning Hotel Room gave me a couple of good-ish nights sleep and somewhere to retreat to when banging out a song (quite literally, on my recently created drum) for the evening’s performance. It was a little temporary home I got to stay at.

Now I am home.

I say a prayer for those with no home, with a broken home, a stolen home.