Wijnand Boon

Music, words, video…

Caminante, no hay camino…

For as long as I can remember, whenever someone asked me: what do you want ‘to be’ when you grow up?, I never had an answer and I still don’t today.

Interview for Dutch Radio 5 after my 8.000 kilometer walk through Europe.

After having walked from the Netherlands to Spain I was invited to be the first Paulo Coelho Alchemist Peace Pilgrim for peace organisation Masterpeace. From Spain to Istanbul I walked as ambassador for this organisation.

“If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know, you will never become anything, and that is your reward.”
— Oscar Wilde
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Every Hello is a Goodbye

Hello,
she said and opened up the door
I took my hat off
and put my bag down on the floor

Won’t you come in
you must be freezing from the cold
Take a seat down by the fire,
make yourself at home

How a drifter finds a hand
In every town in every land
From a stranger to a friend in a single second
But every hello is a goodbye waiting to happen
Yes, every hello is a goodbye

Easy talking,
another log upon the fire
She pours an ocean of wine
until it’s time that we retire

How a drifter finds a hand
In every town in every land
From a stranger to a friend in a single second
But every hello is a goodbye waiting to happen
Yes, every hello is a goodbye

Is there a kiss upon thos lips
And will my hands be on those hips
Before the night is through
Is there a question on her mind
Could she be, all I hope to find

Oh every hello is a goodbye waiting to happen
Yes, every hello is a goodbye waiting to happen
When every hello is a goodbye

This was the first song I ever wrote the lyrics and the music for. My band polished the chord progression here and there, because they were simply great at that, and it ended up sounding better than I ever thought it would. Magical times these were. Discovering new ways to express myself.

Guitarist Thijs “Matt” Jacobs wrote the music and brought it to a rehearsal session one day. I wrote the lyrics, not knowing then what I know know, that I would be wandering through Europe a couple of years later. Almost all the other lyrics I wrote had something of this theme in it. On hindsights what was to come shouldn’t have come as a surprise I guess…

The first song I ever wrote in Dutch, my mother tongue. Which is appropriate, since I wrote it for my mother’s birthday. She had this eerie premonition when she was younger that she would not make it past 62. As kids we hated to hear that obviously. So I wrote her this song when she turned 63. Almost 20 years later she is still shining!