And yes, screenshots for your amusement: 1 and 2. Tell me if anything looks awry.
Second explanation: the current song theme. If you don't recognize it, it's lyrics from "Southern Cross" by Crosby, Stills, and Nash. I tend to think that the lyrics have to be taken with the music, because they're not all specifically relevant to me at the moment as just words, and to me they're really attached to a certain quality of the song which really makes me feel like sailing, somehow. I can't quite describe it. Anyway, I'll probably be trying to fit a few more lines from it here and there around the page. Here are a few of the verses that I like best:
When you see the Southern Cross for the first time
You understand now why you came this way
'Cause the truth you might be running from is so small,
But it's big as a promise, the promise of a coming day.
So I'm sailing for tomorrow, my dreams are a-dying,
And my love is an anchor tied to you, tied with a silver chain.
I have my ship and all her flags are a-flying.
She is all that I have left and music is her name.
Think about how many times I have fallen,
Spirits are using me, larger voices calling,
What heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten.
I have sailed around the world, searching for that woman, girl,
Who knows love can endure, and you know it will.
I'll explain the title first. It's a phrase that echoes in my head sometimes, part of a poem that was never written. I'm almost glad it never was, because that way it retains the spirit of what it makes me feel and think without being solidified and limited by the cold hard words I put around it. But just because I can't poem it the way I wanted to doesn't mean I can't explain it. Age-Old Songs refers to that feeling that you get sometimes that everything of worth has already been said, done, created, and accomplished, that somehow the world is just repeating itself and there's never anything new. But at the same time it refers to the feeling that we all have something in common, some sort of binding link, common sentiments and ideas and aspirations that tie people together in both place and time. It is both a positive and a negative, since it refers to a connection which can feel both empowering and stifling, depending on one's situation or mood. It's an idea that keeps coming back to me, even though it never made it into a poem or song. And perhaps someday I will write the song, if as I write it I don't suddenly realize that the tune is all too familiar. It's something that happens all the time.
