Humpty Dumpty Sat On A Wall

Everybody is familar with the nursery rhyme 'Humpty Dumpty'. I know that I sang it when I was a child and my children sing it now. Humpty Dumpty appears in Alice Through the Looking Glass, and if you were brought up watching Play School as a child, Humpty Dumpty is one of their main characters. He's an egg!

The Nursery Rhyme's origins are debatable, but you can use that wonderful online resource 'wikipedia' to find out more.

The Rhyme goes as follows:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the King's horses and all the King's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again

If you recall from my blog 'The New Elvis Presley', I mentioned that Mark Andrew had put me in touch with Helen Reizer (PR and Event Management). She kindly offered to write a press release which I used to promote the release of 'The New Elvis Presley'.

She also inadvertently sowed the seeds of my next project, by asking whether any money from The New Elvis Presley was being donated to charity. I said it wasn't, but if I did write a song where the proceeds would go to charity it would be the Humpty Dumpty foundation, which was created by Paul Francis OAM. This is the charity that the company I work for are affiliated with, and therefore I knew Jane Flemming, the Australian Pentathelete who was on the board of directors at the Humpty Dumpty Foundation, because she was doing promotional events for our company. It just so happened that Jane and Helen were good friends. How bizarre was that?

Well, I was sitting at my piano, like you do, tinkering away, when I played an unusual chord Absus2, followed by a Gm (Don't get up hung up on the chords if you are not a musician) which is very melancholy. Whilst playing back and forth between these two chords I came up with the first line to Shine That Light. It wasn't called Shine That Light at that time, because I had only just come up with the first line.

It didn't even have a working title, which is something that Paul McCartney uses when his songs are forming. 'Scrambled Eggs' was the working title for his classic 'Yesterday'.

The opening line with its accompanying melody was as follows:

'Another day goes by without a letter or a call'

This now opens up many possibilities of interpretation. Ask yourself, what is your first thought on reading this line. What images are you conjuring up whilst reading this?

I will leave you with those images, but don't forget to join me for my next blog.

I am a songwriter.

Guy Simons