Soul was everywhere in the 60s and 70s. Soul music, soul food, soul sister. I first knew soul in church, where it meant being damned, more or less. Soul music is more about getting on down than rising up to heaven... Soul is moving to the beat – of our hearts as well as to the rhythm of the music. Growing up with soul meant the inner landscape was out there in song. It made you feel known... alive... as if only soul music could see you, knew who you really were, recognised your deepest longings and... told you that you were OK. Fifty years on I begin writing these Soul Moves essays during the five months in which we lived neither here nor there. We are in a camper van, the phone tuned to soul, new and old. It keeps our spirits up and our feet dancing. We are not homeless but between homes. It is an interruptive time. It is an uncertain time wherein doubts and fears could grow. And that most precious thing, a time without belonging, in which new discoveries could be made. These essays follow the moving lines of change. From house moves to migration, from ageing and retiring to grieving and re-constellating relationships, changes which can be hard to navigate. What I discovered anew, in moving to Bexhill, is that when we make of change a soul move, resilience, hope, beauty, community and celebration come too.
