Writing Down the Bones

When I was 14, my older sister gave me the Rainer Maria Rilke Book "Letters to a Young Poet". I would take the bus to Ann Arbor, from my small home town of Big Rapids and sit in coffee shops and parks and read. I would imagine each letter written to me. This book helped me to understand my love for words and stories. I began to write more and I began to love to write. I wrote songs, stories, poems, dreams and emotions and they filled journal upon journal.


I was also given the book "writing down the bones" by Natalie Goldberg. In this book Goldberg takes you on a journey where you learn to abandon your self critic and write without cation, thought or limit and let your heart pour out onto the page. Writing from the marrow of your bones. Recently I found out that they make some black ink from bones. This reminded me that magic and alchemy still exist. From bone to bone and written out on the bones of trees.


Now, I'm 28, I am a musician and I travel all of the time. I am always looking at my computer, my iphone. I still write every day, and I always have the need for ink and paper. I find though that most of my magic is in letters to others, or e-mails and other than the songs I write, there isn't much more in the pages of my journals. Now I believe in the power of will, and I also believe that you can instill magic in anything, even a computer screen. So perhaps this blog is my way of finding the alchemy in the new world of technology. Perhaps I am hoping that I will write more and that the stories will flow. Perhaps these are letters from me to... you.


love,


May