The Quaint Cottage

The Quaint Cottage
By Paul McCann

Anto would be there every day in his quaint little cottage by the ocean . You could  hear the waves crashing down on the shore of the bay . His little cottage had seen  many stormy days and had weathered them all out . From the outside the cottage looked worn and battered and tattered  and torn with a roof that was hatched with hay and doors painted with coats of a grey primer .

Inside it was warm with an open-hearth fireplace  that was well stacked with turf and in the corner was a little table and chair and guitar sat on a stand on the floor that had composed thousands of songs over the years .

A musician’s life can sometimes be a lonely existence . Inspiration would come and go, like the wind and the rain hitting on the windowpane.

Sometimes he would catch a glimpse of a song or a tune in his head and then he would cast out a melodic hook on the heart strings of his soul to try and capture a song in the making . For Anto it was like weaving a dream from the threads of thoughts that he stitched up in time to become like a jacket to worn or even a suit if there was enough material on hand . It goes without saying that there’s always a  chance that the song could become someone’s favourite song ne day  .

Songwriters like him were one of a kind . He was not the kind of man you would meet every day . He spent many hours of every day looking for an echo because that’s where he found inspiration and when the hard times came, he knew there would be an expression of that in what he wrote and with the way he played his music . He loved to play and sing the songs he wrote; every word had been born from the suffering in silence and brought a message in every song for people to hear and understand .  He wrote songs for the good times and the bad times ; he wrote songs of the times he was living to be left as a legacy and he wrote songs of the past to be remembered in the future . Some of his songs they came quickly and rolled of his tongue . Thise were the best kind of songs her ever wrote and were the ones to be shared and sung  by everyone .

I called on him on a day when the winter was taking too long to leave and I asked him if he could answer me a question or two to pass a few hours of the day .

When I came to the door, he welcomed me with a hug and then put a mug of tea in my hand and we sat and talked about some of his new songs . He always liked to record in the back room of his little cottage where he had built a modern recording studio where he arranges and produces his songs with his close musician friends.

When you walk into his cottage as many songwriters have some, it’s, a bit like walking into another world. You get a sense of being blown in by a wind into this sanctuary place. Life takes a side seat and magical things happen as ideas are

cast out with melodic hooks on the strings of a guitar . Visions come and go like dreams captured in brief moments of time . There is a presence within the cottage that descends around you , bringing creativity and songs that are easy to find in a strange kind of way . Some people who have come to record there in the cottage have said that its like they have heard an echo of inspiration bouncing from the walls which makes the expression of music flow freely in a natural way that  When the music starts to play and words come as if they were pre-ordered in some lyric warehouse in the sky that tailor makes songs for the world to hear .

Songs for the good times that help us to live and songs that give us an edge to the dullness should it come and . Song songs just  roll of the tongue to be shared by young and old .

This quaint little cottage was a special place where the music of life came . Untroubled and unknown people came there to create music . There were songwriters and poets , musicians and singers who had come to the cottage over the tears who had given much of their lives to music So there was a common ground there and an understanding of the love of music that demands a lot but gives a lot in return . Healing for broken hearts , feeling for loving hearts and happiness for the lonely hearts underneath the roof thatched with hay where nothing fell apart and no one felt left out . It was a home for all who came there . There were so many songs that were recorded there ,

For decades Anto had lived there alone in his little cottage with an ocean view Hye enjoyed his way of life and those who would sometimes come to visit . He enjoyed the little shows of unrehearsed songs and the singing of tunes that were a constant sound around the cottage .

Anto had a mild and  mighty voice that commanded respect  and if the feeling was right magic imagery presented musical stories in a dream like sound . The hidden things present themselves in strange ways  where the love of music is found .

Anto and I wrote a few songs while I was in the cottage before we said goodbye until the next time .

“I’ll look forward to that “

Anto said and I responded

“Don’t know when that will be but see you then “:

He closed the door and  went back inside his quaint little cottage

The End