It makes me do what it wants. I know that I could not compose it. It had to be something put in me to compose it. Surrendering himself with constant fealty to his muse, he was able to keep composing and singing until the rare and deadly blood cancer, multiple myeloma, squatted its soucouyant self down beside him and sucked his life away on the morning of February 11. He had kept himself soulfully attuned to the movements of his people, plucking melodies out of the very air they exhaled, and like the purifying forces of nature s flora, handing them back as distilled musical forms.
Composing is a very tricky thing, it goes both ways.
Sometimes you get an inspiration of a melody while walking in the street, and that melody will bring to you the idea, then the idea will bring to you the lyrics. And sometimes you keep walking the street, and you get an idea, and that idea will bring the melody, and the melody will bring the lyrics. If you knew Kitchener, you could imagine him strolling along and suddenly being led astray, riveted by sounds that to your mind might just be the general cacophony of a busy street, but out of which some solitary note has beckoned him. You would see it in the faraway look that appeared in his eyes, suspending his habitual blinking as his vision took shape. Then you would know that once again the muse has descended.