no sweeping exits

This is the song I can't get out of my head.




This is kind of strange: I've been hearing this song, ever since reading these words, by Keith Richards in his extraordinarily (extraordinary, because I never thought of Richards as, you know, actually speaking words) written auto biography, Life.



" 'Wild Horses' almost wrote itself.. it was one of those magical moments when things come together. It's like 'Satisfaction'. You just dream it, and suddenly it's all in your heands. Once you've got the vision in your mind of wild horses, I mean, what's the next phrase you're going to use?'

So how random, that on the day that I chose to do this post, although it's already had 1,561,312 views, the most recent comment should be this: 

"My girlfriend broke up with me in an airport. She had a flight before me, so she boarded the plane and left me behind. I sat in the terminal, mulling over what happened as the sun peaked above the horizon on a beautiful, Portland Oregon morning. I listened to this song over and over as I watched the planes disappear into the sunrise. I realized that I was free from a bad relationship. I was finally free to be me. It was probably the most beautiful moment ever."

As Keith Richards put it:

'What is it that makes you want to write songs? In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people's hearts. You want to plant yourself there, or at least get a resonance, where other people became a bigger instrument than the one you're playing. It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. Sometimes I think songwriting is about tightening the heartstrings as much as possible without bringing on a heart attack.'

I ran into Richards once - literally. A great little restaurant near us, in London. I was coming out of the ladies' room, he was with a private party in one of the rooms, and - I move fast, and I guess he does, too - we nearly knocked each other down. We laughed. I came back to our table and announced that I think I just ran into Keith Richards, and sure enough, the waitress confirmed it was him. Lovely guy, and reading his book, I only like him even more.


All photos by me, including the images OF me, taken with my dad's old Pentax, and colour slide film, setting the camera up on a rock, with a timer.

Shot in Joshua Tree, California, and on my ex boyfriend David's ranch in New Mexico. Unlike the boy in the airport, I don't feel at all it was a bad relationship, and he is still a friend to this day - and to my husband, as well. But not all relationships are meant to last forever. Still, I know I'd have had a very different life, if that chapter had played itself out.