The Long and Winding Road

I keep singing the song quietly, I think, to myself. This week as things change for me and I set off on something new, I keep singing the song.

It’s in me like bone, like heart and soul. Like it has been since I first heard it the best part of fifty years ago, and would set off to walk the five miles to where my first girlfriend lived, singing the song. It’s on my walks, it’s when I go somewhere new and when I start something different.

More than a soundtrack, more like a guide, a compass, a longing. It’s the sound of longing and it always has been. The song of trying out new things, which always lead me back to the long and winding road.

And in my head the song is always as I first heard it.

Though I’ve heard Paul singing it one night down at the King’s Dock and got the version where he took off the strings, the real one for me is the first one on ‘Let It Be.’ When he’d left the group and the others let Phil Spector put strings on it. Richard Hewson’s longing arrangement. The sound of longing.

That’s the one I keep singing, this week like always, as I set off down a new road, a road I haven’t walked along before. What a song.

What a song.

This week it’s the sound of starting off on my MA/PhD at the University of Liverpool. Other times it’s one of the sounds of my life and always has been. Thank you Paul McCartney.