My pal Jamie from Duward Discussion has reintroduced her wonderful meme. Take This Tune provides a musical prompt each week, usually a video with the song lyrics. The task is to write something inspired by the song or something in the lyrics.
This week's prompt is the song I Am A Town, by Mary Chapin Carpenter. Jamie writes of the song...
This wonderful song by Mary Chapin Carpenter is about all the small towns that we once knew that now are dying or changing beyond recognition. We flee from them, remember them, hope to find them again as imagined, and miss them when they disappear. They are hopes and dreams both fulfilled or dashed.
There's no place that evokes that kind of emotional connection for me. I don't have any particular allegiances to a physical location. There is no figurative "going home" that means anything to me. None of my family is left in the place where I grew up and graduated from high school.
In fact, I've often found inhabitants of small towns to be suspicious of strangers, resistant to change or progress, and generally unwelcoming. Communities can sometimes be very provincial in their values.
So I'm not sure what to write for this particular prompt. It isn't often that Jamie stumps me. Usually I can find some kind of inspiration in the song or lyrics.
Oh well. Maybe next week.
