Nickel Creek: When You Come Back Down

Video for When You Come Back Down by Nickel Creek, c/o YouTube

"You got to leave me now, you got to go alone You got to chase a dream, one that's all your own Before it slips away When you're flyin' high, take my heart along I'll be the harmony to every lonely song That you learn to play

When you're soarin' through the air
I'll be your solid ground
Take every chance you dare
I'll still be there
When you come back down
When you come back down..."

Just bought the first Nickel Creek (bluegrass wunderkinder) album, and so far haven't broken it in because I can't resist sticking When You Come Back Down on repeat for an hour at a time. It's gorgeous - the lyrics, the vocals, the mandolin, the violin...

It's a love song, but not necessarily of romantic love. It speaks about the supportive, unconditional love of good friendship or parenting. Certainly it makes me think of my parents - I'm well aware that not everyone has the good relationship with their parents that I have with mine, and I'm so thankful I've been blessed with them. They've always been 100% supportive of me in whatever I wanted to do, wherever I wanted to go.

Not that I've deliberately rebelled against them at any point - but I realise now that they could have made things very hard for me when I wanted to go to art college and my teachers were angling for me to head off to Oxford to do something safe and academic. Mum & Dad would have been very proud if I'd chosen to do that, but they'd been sticking my drawings to the fridge door since I could hold a crayon, and knew where my heart was.

They didn't impose their ambitions on me, they encouraged me to do what I yearned to do - support that Mum certainly didn't get from her family when she was leaving school and had aspirations of her own. You're good people, Mr & Mrs B.