A Thousand Years

While I am by myself for two weeks, while I am percolating the story I am writing currently and all the changes it will have to go through (part of it due to my recent visit back to Budapest), I am listening to music...I always have my best ideas either while traveling and looking at the landscape, or while listening to music; the combination of rhythm, words and melodies helps to give birth to ideas that until that particular moment were just formless clouds in the back of my mind. I am an image-oriented writer--I see images, scenes, faces, actions very vividly and quite often I start to write without knowing where it will end or even who these people are. But apart from two or three times, I did not start stories out of dreams; I very rarely have dreams that vivid (like I said, maybe two or three, and those stories are still unwritten. Well, one of them is partially done.)

So right now, I have this in my head after listening to, again, Sting's Brand New Day album:

A thousand years, a thousand more,
A thousand times a million doors to eternity
I may have lived a thousand lives, a thousand times
An endless turning stairway climbs
To a tower of souls
If it takes another thousand years, a thousand wars,
The towers rise to numberless floors in space
I could shed another million tears, a million breaths,
A million names but only one truth to face

A million roads, a million fears
A million suns, ten million years of uncertainty
I could speak a million lies, a million songs,
A million rights, a million wrongs in this balance of time
But if there was a single truth, a single light
A single thought, a singular touch of grace
Then following this single point , this single flame,
The single haunted memory of your face

I still love you
I still want you
A thousand times the mysteries unfold themselves
Like galaxies in my head

I may be numberless, I may be innocent
I may know many things, I may be ignorant
Or I could ride with kings and conquer many lands
Or win this world at cards and let it slip my hands
I could be cannon food, destroyed a thousand times
Reborn as fortune's child to judge another's crimes
Or wear this pilgrim's cloak, or be a common thief
I've kept this single faith, I have but one belief

I still love you
I still want you
A thousand times the mysteries unfold themselves
Like galaxies in my head
On and on the mysteries unwind themselves
Eternities still unsaid
'Til you love me