My scarf
A new song from A. D. Walsh (me) plus bits about Azerbaijan
I think I lost it
My scarf, did you come across it? Some things change, others remain the same. These are lyrics from my new song, My Scarf. Thank God for change. Thank God some things stay the same. There is an obvious ode to Lucinda Williams in the song.
Some songs are sad but they make you happy. I’d love for you to listen. You can do so by clicking one of the blue rectangles below :-)
It is one week into 2025, sunny and snowy in Michigan, there is a calico cat purring next to me. I saw deer tracks in a field yesterday. I saw a silversmith’s home in the woods. I saw a painter’s studio. I saw lips and eyes and sweat. I saw an artist singing with a sword. I saw the lake. I saw a weaver and a poet, laughter and a carpenter’s truck and a child’s viola and Lord of the Rings. I saw the Detroit Lions win the #1 seed in the NFC.
I want to sit in the cold sand until I am cold in my coat, my scarf, my hat. I want to paint the wind different colours and watch it blow across the beach and send you a video of it.
What came in 2024 was grief and renewal. By some gorgeous accident I live in a beautiful Montréal apartment 3 stories above a quiet street with music and stories and food and laughter. Amongst your things I live. I saw them looking back at me, silver and red. I saw the Earth turn as I laid on that couch. Your things became my things in time. My life is the size of my life. I am falling down the vertical shaft of a skyscraper. I am a skyscraper with hundreds of rooms. Mono no aware. Did you look?
In 2025 I will continue to write and sing and laugh and solve problems and feel happy and sad. Not too close to God and not too close to the Devil and where beauty and laughter go I will follow and when love doth bade welcome I will sit and eat and miles to go before I sleep. Now a bit about Azerbaijan.
Azərbaycan, the Land of Fire
I have a job. They sent me to COP29 in Azerbaïdjan where in the mountains near the capital city, Baku, oil seeps burns an eternal flame. In Baku there are sweet cats in the streets and the largest collection of miniature books on Earth. There were 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists. I saw one hiding his name-tag like a spy. Activists worked through the night. They ran laps, slept in corridors and dark rooms. Fights broke out. I saw Amy Goodman. I saw a beautiful broom.
I spent 10 days in this country with climate activists from 200 countries, working to shine a light and trying to make it hold its shape. I see how the space between the world we want and the one we inhabit is ever-changing. There are people working in imperfect and hostile conditions, fighting for every tenth of a degree, for every inch of shoreline, to be even a small part of that effort is an honour. I think of the last lines of Middlemarch :
“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” — George Eliot, Middlemarch
Xoxo,
ADW
great post king