It is ironic that the last few months I have been plagued by memories and feelings of getting old and life passing me by.
For my September Outlawz challenge I had chosen the song Memory from Cats and had chosen an image from the sponsor SBLeigh. At first I wasn’t sure how to put them together, except for the cats.
I used Microsoft paint to colour the image, much better than my colouring efforts, but would like it to look a more realistic paint effect, so will keep playing with it. The lamp is cut with my Cricut Joy, using Cricut design space, the moon is an image from Digitalshesaid and cut with circle die, backing paper from Baker Ross, mounted on dark blue cardstock.
“Midnight, not a sound from the pavement
Has the moon lost her memory?
She is smiling alone
In the lamplight, the withered leaves collect at my feet
And the wind begins to moan
Memory, all alone in the moonlight
I can dream of the old days
Life was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again
Every street lamp seems to beat
A fatalistic warning
Someone mutters and the street lamp sputters
And soon it will be morning
Daylight, I must wait for the sunrise
I must think of a new life
And I mustn’t give in
When the dawn comes, tonight will be a memory too
And a new day will begin
Burnt out ends of smoky days
The stale, cold smell of morning
A street lamp dies, another night is over
Another day is dawning
Touch me, it’s so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my days in the sun
If you touch me, you’ll understand what happiness is
Look, a new day has begun”
I think that the illustration represents the song, particularly the first verse and the cats signify it is from the musical cats. The song “was written for the 1981 musical Cats, where it is sung primarily by the character Grizabella as a melancholic remembrance of her glamorous past and as a plea for acceptance” (Wikipedia). The song was based on a poem by T.S Eliot called Rhapsody on a Windy Night
As I said at the beginning I have been feeling a lot like this myself, although I don’t think I had a glamourous past! We have to accept the old days are gone, take each day as it comes and find the beauty in each day. There is however nothing wrong with having memories, they make us who we are.
You can listen to the song on You Tube