I’ve been listening to country music lately, in the middle of the night when all else around is sleeping. Songs from the ’70s mostly: Kenny Rogers, Anne Murray, Johnny Cash, Reba McEntire, Willie Nelson, Crystal Gayle, Kris Kristofferson. There seems a certain fatalism that rings through mostly clearly in the sad songs, always a sense that the affair must come to an end: the cowboy has to move on, and the dreamer too, and the hobo, and the gambler, and the salesman, and the soldier, and the cheatin’ wives and husbands. The music of a people always on the move, the music of lives moulded by distance.

I’ll be back in America in a couple of months, beginning in the northeast and heading back down south. North Carolina, Florida, quite possibly Texas. Haven’t been in ages. Looking forward to it.