Full Circle is the working title for my soon to materialize memoir. Although the text has yet to be written, I like having a title first because it evokes the theme. The image displayed above is a photograph of a 1478 drawing of an Ouroborus taken from an alchemical tract. The ouroborus is a Greek symbol of a dragon eating it’s tail, sloughing off the old skin and being reborn.

Mircae Eliade, a prominent historian and professor of religions and mythology in the 20th century, wrote eloquently about the ouroboros, among other things, in his book The Myth of the Eternal Return (first published in English in 1954). It’s been a while since I’ve read it but Eliade’s work impressed me deeply with how we, both as individuals and the collective, can be enriched by embracing ‘archaic’ concepts because they are so organic to the human experience.

It is certainly true that my life has come full circle. From my beginnings as a singer/pianist through the intensely exciting world of storytelling for movies and television and back to music again. T.S. Elliot said it best in these lines…

We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

except from T.S. Elliot’ s Little Gidding (1943)

This is not to say that I feel at the end. I relate strongly to the idea of rebirth, which for came about for me though a surprise diagnosis of colon cancer. There’s nothing quite like a brush with death to make one feel alive again. I’m lucky. We got it out of my body early. So to me the health journey I’ve been on this year has been a blessing, in more ways than one.

Anyway, I’m happy to have a title and a theme because now I feel much more grounded about getting started in earnest getting it down on paper.