'Louder than sirens, louder than bells'

For awhile I haven't known what to write here; I've been totally absorbed in listening to music for the past three weeks. I have this tendency to listen to a song again again again over and over and over and over until the beat and rhythm and sounds are all part of me, so incorporated into the fabric of my cells they can no longer be separated out from me. I seem to get into this 'song zone' at least once a year and sometimes it carries on with the same album or artist for months at a time.

This past month it's been a Florence and the Machine zone but two songs particularly. The first to set me off on the spiralling journey was Howl and after listening to it in the kitchen, in the car, on my mp3 player, so many times that the words stopped making sense, after all that I discovered (almost by accident) another song from the album that I liked even more. I say that with amazement because when I first finally allowed myself to listen to Flo, a few months ago, I became obsessed with Cosmic Love and thought nothing could beat it. But then fast forward to last month and Howl...but then...then...my mp3 flipped to Drumming Song.

Wow! And the the spiral of soundsong began anew and for the past 10 days it's just been Drumming Song all the time, so much so that now the drumming and the sharp edges of sound are needling their way into my pores and into my muscles and blood.

In her blog Florence says: “I want my music to sound like throwing yourself out of a tree, or off a tall building, or as if you’re being sucked down into the ocean and you can’t breathe, it’s something overwhelming and all-encompassing that fills you up, and you’re either going to explode with it, or you’re just going to disappear.”

These are the best words to fit the way I feel when listening to her songs and right now it's all about Drumming Song...


"As I move my feet towards your body
I can hear this beat it fills my head up
and gets louder and louder
It fills my head up and gets louder and louder...