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Sounds simple enough. And to the prolific Australian singer-songwriter who, 20 years into a celebrated career, recently released a two-CD set comprising 21 original songs, perhaps it is. We should all be so lucky.
"Days of aching sunshine, days of sweetest rain/Days we know will never come again."
That bit of poetry can be heard on the beautiful These Are the Days, one of several songs on Kelly's Ways & Means that have followers of the former Messenger speculating about an upturn in the composer's love life.
Certainly, despite the presence of jibes like You Broke a Beautiful Thing, the overall mood of the new Kelly release is decidedly lovestruck. Particularly when compared to Kelly's previous album, the bitter Nothing But a Dream, a collection that followed the end of a longtime relationship for the composer.
"I have always wanted to write happier love songs," Kelly, who flirted with North American mainstream success during the '80s, claims.
"I think that's the challenge of any songwriter; it's much easier to write about love-gone-wrong or unrequited love. Conflict and drama are a lot easier to write about than things going along pretty well. It's a challenge to try and write good love songs without being banal or smug. Or mushy."
It is, as Kelly explains in one song, The Oldest Story in the Book. And though he has again discovered love since the release of Nothing But a Dream, one shouldn't take it as literal.
"A song might start from something close to you," Kelly says, "but by the time it becomes a song all these other forces have acted on it and it's become something else. I think it's reductive to say, 'Oh, this song is that person's life.' It doesn't work like that.
"Often people think the lyrics are being driven by something in your life.
"But the lyrics get driven by a lot of the music."
Much of the "country soul" music on Ways & Means was itself driven by a collaborative spirit in the studio. Kelly and his band -- guitarist Dan Luscombe, drummer Peter Luscombe and bassist Bill MacDonald -- created many of the songs in the studio.
And the air of co-operation extended to Kelly bringing his nephew Dan Kelly in on the proceedings; Kelly the younger co-wrote songs and played a variety of instruments, lending the album a neat cross-generational appeal.
"It was a bit of an experiment," Paul Kelly says. "Peter, Bill and I are all of a similar age -- mid to late 40s -- and adding a couple of young guys in their late 20s added a bit of a spark to it. That also spilled over to the lyrics. Arranging is very collaborative. That's the way I like to work. And when you write with other people, you come up with things that you wouldn't have by yourself. It pulls different things out of you."
Enough things, in fact, to fill two CDs. Not bad for a 40-something songwriter whose profile in North America has been too low for too long.
Not so many years ago, Kelly albums like Gossip and Under the Sun were radio staples.
More recently, ambitious efforts such as an experimental outfit called Professor Ratbaggy and a bluegrass album have been enjoyed only by Aussies. Ways & Means, like Nothing But a Dream before it, has been granted domestic distribution courtesy of True North Records. And tonight's Ottawa show comes as part of an extensive North American tour.
But Kelly, who has maintained a loyal following on this continent, seems unconcerned about his commercial fortunes.
"We keep coming," Kelly says with a laugh.
"Sometimes people notice we're there; sometimes they don't."