Music is very important to me. It is my healer, my inspiration and often, helps me get to places I otherwise wouldn’t. I write to music and with music. I work with music too. Music makes my soul soar to the heavens and back again. It also triggers memories as well as feelings and inspiration.
Just a couple of bars of a song and I can be transported across decades. There are songs from the 1960’s and late 50’s that instantly put me in a small front room in the house I was born in. I can see the valve radio sitting on a shelf with its complex mapping of wavelengths and stations across the front of it. I can see the large box-like TV with essentially curtains that could be closed and opened to display the screen. It sat on huge legs and when switched off, you could watch the dot for minutes afterwards. I can feel the atmosphere too – my mother invariably in the kitchen preparing dinner, lunch or a snack, the gloomy front room with its cacti growing in some rather strange wire-based stand, waiting for Top of the Pops…..
Some songs remind me of people – my Dad of course. If a song got under his skin he would whistle it in a strange little whistle between his teeth of click his tongue to make a drumming sound. I recall the day I played Hello by Status Quo in the front room on his stereo. He left the room in disgust but by gradually grew to like the Quo too and at his funeral, thats what they played him out with…
Right now I am listening to Bryan Adams and I am transported back to Wembley in 1992. It is me and my 5-year old son Paul patiently waiting through boring bands and music for the headliner Mr. Adams. Paul adored the song from the Robin Hood movie and the LP it came from. I recall we bought a tour T-shirt for him. It probably fits him now!
There is music that takes me to the edge of darkness and music that lets me explore the deepest recesses of my psyche. There is music that makes my heart ache for times gone by; people, places and good times. There is music that brings a lump to my throat and stinging tears to my eyes.
Not sure what I would do without music.