Dust & Grime ~ Kirsty Heggie (official album 2020)

A lot of people I know will say to me that they think this song is about themselves, or someone they know well.
(A lot of people I know tend to be of a certain persuasion - that is; eccentric, creative, unique, reclusive, offbeat)
It probably is. Kind of.
But originally, it was a remarkable dude who was named by students at the Aberdeen University as "Tibetan Dave"
He was my muse and good friend for several years and helped me through my dissertation (which, by the way, was called "MADNESS, NONSENSE & REVELATION: UNLIMITED BECOMING". And by the way, my professor wasn't pleased with it. But I passed. HA)
Dave.
I can't say too much without asking his permission first, but he was always delighted to be the subject of a song or poem.
I suppose people like Dave were the beginning of me realising that I felt a gravitation PULL towards people who just didn't fit in. But kind of fitted in with not fitting in.
I felt a certain reassurance by the raw-ness and real-ness of such people that I could not find among the flock.
But all of that aside. THIS SONG is one of my OLDEST songs!
And yet it stands alone as one of my best and most universally appealing songs, in my opinion. Strangely though, it never got recorded until very recently.
It seemed to always elude me, disappear into my subconscious and pop out again randomly
This song came about from the first time I realised that all the "silly words and melodies" I was making in my head were not in fact silly, but actually meant something. Sometimes I would find words and melodies appearing, as if created by a part of me that I was estranged from, or that didn't quite have my consent to create.
MYSTERIOUS...
But yeah... I think that everyone has this part of the brain.
It enjoys "silly rhymes", it enjoys repetitions, and it's something of a one-man/woman internal band that we often wish would shut up.
I got acquainted with this part of my brain when I walked the Santiago Pilgimage for the second time..this time ALONE.
(I was late on my first day of climbing the Pyrenees mountains, so was all on my own-some and ended up having to take shelter in solitude in an emergency cabin somewhere where I slept overnight with nothing but my own swirling mind and a blizzard outside to listen to....)
I call this part of my brain a few things, one of which is the Mad Hatter.
Anyway, I started to realise that often the things we disregard and call "silly" are the most relevant and important. Nursery rhymes often seem nonsensical, for instance, and yet in those few words, is often some kind of great truth if you dig deep enough, or a very telling story that gets totally overlooked!
I started to listen to my silly rhymes and see that same significance, and when I did that and started to not be embarassed to hear them out but also to trust my intuition to serve some kind of subconscious meaning to me.. I began to actually BECOME a songstress, and not just WANT to be one, or TRY to be one. I literally remember the day I said to myself "I'm a songwriter now".
And i never wrote a song that made me cringe ever again.
Back to Dave.
Dave was all about dust.
"dust" this, and "dust" that.
His profanity of choice was usually something about a dustbin.
Dave's flat had this magic quality about it. The way dust settled. It looked like it lived there, it looked like it fitted in with everything, like it belonged. Like it wasn't a bad thing that had to be cleaned up or hidden.
I liked that.
Dirt didn't seem so dirty anymore.
Dave would serve up food in a dirty bowl, but the food was made with so much love and friendliness...simple food, it was, but the way he spoke about food in the same vein as any obscure idea or complicated philosophy.
I started to wonder what made dirt so "dirty".
What made something good and what made something bad.
Why humans valued some people and things
and not other people and things.
I started to like dust a lot. And dirt.
And ever since then my mind has been in a cosmic relationship with the gutter.
www.kirstyheggie.com