The first thing I did when I thought of the line "thinking about clouds" was google it. It seems like a good way of verifying originality. I would think in this age with most people in the English speaking world consuming the same popular media material the chances of two or more people independently coming up with the same idea is quite high, so it's always worth checking these things.
At the time I envisaged it as an xkcd style comic. It came into my head as a full idea; a simple matchstick drawing I moved from mind to paper. A matchstick man with thought bubbles that kept getting larger and eventually became clouds. It conveyed the lightness of the time.
It wasn't until I came to fire up this blog and was faced with naming it that I thought back to it and a myriad of other lines I had scrawled on scraps of paper in lectures or while on nights out or jamming or on trains and busses. All of the lines poured back, each with their own feeling, their own atmosphere, their own time.
It turns out a lot of them are now registered blogs.
I looked at songs I loved; defining ones, ones I could identify with. I carefully extracted my favourite lines and again discovered that they were other peoples' favourites too. So many shared motifs. So many kindred souls.
I'll be travelling soon, with the grace of God, and God I shall hope to find while I travel, but it's exciting to think I've already found people who have written the same lines as I have, who have shared a mindset before even meeting.
And the mindset is pivotal. I named this blog as I did to remind me that when I look at the world I should see it with the flair they have. I want to see it with frizzy hair and morning eyes a smile that knows, and a festival state of mind.
