Ramble On

A Becoming

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Listen Here- Author Read- Podcast Style

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Ramble On: Photo by J.Millard

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Ramble On

Another day. The road. The wander.
The way.
The journey grabs me. 
There is no buying or selling.
We get what we give.
Morning coughs out the guts
of last nights curdled stories.
Visions drunk on dreams 
of what was      and what can be.
The rawness of the not yet done 
cries with an urgency.
Suffocating 
in the back of a throat. 
Stifled hoarse and thick of scream.

A cold chill leaves my body 
for a warmer embrace. 
The crumpled clothes 
that come to find me 
know the shape - of my skin.
They are not interested
in the flesh of my form.
Swallowed by a feeling 
gathering bones.
Coarse with reckoning 
at the edges of broken bread 
chewing on the shadows.
The mystery moans.
Beyond the words.
Beyond the breath
of what can      and can’t be said.
A ramble of ribs - conjuring
between touch and ghost.
As time and space
find the face 
that the mirror decides to wear. 

© Jamie Millard

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The Ramble. The Way. It grabs. It holds. Some days the roads are wide open. Other days, closed. Caring or carrying. The weight of another gravity.

“Mine’s a tale that can’t be told.
My freedom I hold dear.
How years ago in days of old.
When magic filled the air.”

As Robert Plant croons and lilts into a swagger, magic filled the air.
Led Zeppelin II!

Thunder meets lightning in a vinyl melting of sound singing into the bones of a young boy. A cuoreous explorer who carefully slid the record out of the sleeve. Held it so ever very gently. An unfolding. So light yet so heavy. Another gravity. Something powerful that I could not name nor even understand.

The smell of magic and possibility. A becoming. The specter of a calling. Moving through my hands. Deliberately lowering the diamond tipped needle into position. The static slowly building into a wild explosion riding an orchestral soundphony that shook deep into the essence of “Whole Lotta Love”.
The Tolkien infused wizardry of Ramble On was song three - side two. I always played the album from start to finish. Forty minutes forty-four seconds. Only that slight pause in the middle to gently turn the vinyl over and drop the arm down once again.

I’m not sure how that record made its way into our home but as a young boy waking up into the awareness and feelings of a living body in the 70s, it became a revelation. I recall buying my own copy of the album in 1979 when I was finally allowed to spend some money in the local record store. It still lives in my possession. Unopened. Honoured in the plastic it came in. My copy was for the shrine. The mystery. Not a museum. More so a celebration. Maybe one day to open up to have that first experience. All over again. Can the song ever remain the same?

The album itself in those days was a part of the experience. The LP. Part of the mystery. The magic. The story. The phenomenology. I knew every word and every symbol. The satin touch. Every colour. Every picture. Every piece of punctuation. I explored every inch of the album jacket and all the spaces within her sleeves. Her spine. Her spindle. I knew her smell. Her hiding spots. I knew everything in her pockets. Every crease. Wrinkle. Groove. Bend. Played forward or backwards. Every pause in every song. The pitch. The tone. The tension. The anticipation. The surrender. Every Plantonian wail and every lick and riff from Jimmy to John Paul. Every beat on Bonzo’s drums. To put the vinyl on the turntable at 58 still brings the goosebumps. The waves. The memories. The invitation. The invasion. Sound meets soul. The wonder. The awe. This journey - an explosion. The wander. We Ramble on.

Ramble on. And now’s the time, the time is now. Sing my song.

Led Zeppelin II: Ramble On- 1969

Albums. Memories cannot be bought yet they are never free. Living on as souvenirs. In bone. Of skin. Through sound. Old records. We ramble on. Still unfolding. Sharing. Singing. The in-between. A becoming. A journey. Touching something, time and space, can never claim.

There is something within me. Maybe just with me. Around me? A presence that doesn’t need to explain the world from the outside. It speaks from another gravity. Another energy. Possibly of the place of “here” more so than the time tinged tune of now. Enigmatic. Unfathomable. An is-ness. That holds the past in the memories lived here. That hears the expectations of the future lived here. That breathes into the now in a circle of here. Is-ness. A being-ness. Moment to moment change arrives. Yet something changeless is singing. Leaving no footprints. Casting no shadows. Never just a needle. Beyond the volitive whirling volvelle of vinyl. Maybe we were always - the song.

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Thanks for Being - “Here”

May we find what was never lost. Here. We are and were never anywhere else.
A song. May we ramble on.

Lots of Love,

Jamie

Led Zeppelin II LP: Photo by J.Millard

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