"Music is always migrating from its point of origin to its destiny in someone's fleeting moment of experience". Alex Ross From the preface of The Rest Is Noise
Music is a powerful thing isn't it? Ever been out, then someone's music drifts out from somewhere - a passing car, an open window, a shop doorway.... and your mood, your memories, your relationship to that moment...shifts.
I've been playing music all day. I've a collection that straddles many genres and decades. Music for every mood.
I've been careful to avoid music in the early months of this massive life change. It's a bit of a cliché sitting around playing 'our tune' and sobbing into Kleenex. So not me. It's a sign that things have improved somewhat that the tunes are on while I beaver away at todays projects.
I think I've said in previous blogs that I have a strong reaction to lyrics. I think that's why I'm not genre bound. I hear a lyric that resonates and I'm in... doesn't matter if its country, rock, r & b, pop or any other genre. I hear a well constructed thought set to music and the song becomes part of my psyche.
Goo Goo Dolls on at the moment and that chorus...
oh dear... someone else has actually been to the same emotional spot. I feel for John Rzeznik... torturted with writers block then suddenly out it came, Iris - a tortured ode to love and loss. If it wasn't daylight I'd sway with my lighter in the air.
Then randomly The Contours comes on and I'm leaping about the living room executing the best twist, mash potato and any other dance big in 1962.
Much the same routine for Pharrell... but with much more clapping. Gosh... it's a challenge to feel down when that song is on. Though for a while I found that 'Happy' was mocking me as it was released just as my entire world imploded. But in the end, the incessant upbeat nature of the beat and the simplicity of the lyrics got to me - 5 months on and I can feel what the songs conveys at last.
With all this bouncing around I am grateful that I have moved to a place where I am not overlooked. At my old house, my neighbours were often entertained by my disco for one in my living room. It was not so much the night club dancing that raised an eyebrow, it was the full on lyrical routines (sometimes with props) that were the talk of the Lane. Where I am now, I am over looked by nothing more than a field and some trees... my petite allégros from sofa to sofa or grand jeté with chiffons trailing behind me passes without comment.
All those years as a dancer but really I am a frustrated choreographer. On comes George Michael singing Turn a Different Corner (my late boyfriend liked the score... doubt if ever heard the lyrics in all the time he lived!) It reminds me of him but what do I do .. I step out a routine. Yup... I really did Fouette spins round and round the coffee table!! I recall in the old house he'd be coming down the stairs and look into the living room, shake his head and mutter "Always Dancing". He'd be somewhat unsurprised to look down and see not much has changed.(!)
Music has the ability to invoke in me more than just the desire to dance. Sometimes I hear a track and I'm no longer present. I transport to where ever the music takes me. It's very odd... I tend not to remember where I was the first time I heard a track... it just send my head places.
Sometimes a track that was absently on while I'm decorating will always crop up in my head when every I look at my handy work, even though I must have heard it before. The beautiful Never by All the Luck in the World is a song that has suffered that fate.. I hear it.. I think kitchen cupboards. Nor quite what the Irish 3 piece had in mind when they put the track out in 2012! But for the life of me I cannot get another (more appropriate) picture in mind!
For example, put on Adamski's Killer and it's 1990 musically - but in my head I'm in Vegas in the early noughties, it's early morning and I'm having breakfast on the roof of a club I'd been in the night before. I must have heard Killer a million times since it's release in 1990... and yet play it and that where I go. A long ago closed club, on a strip that now looks completely different, a crowd of people whose names I don't recall (and doubt I could have at the time) - but I can smell almost taste the freshly squeezed juice and smell that super crispy bacon. I find myself squinting my eyes against the strong rays of the risen sun bouncing of the sequins on our sparkly club attire, I smile as I hear the laughter as we tell tall tales to amuse each other. Then the track ends and I'm in 2014 again.
Then of course there is the power of music to put lyrics and score to your experience. Sometimes you are ambivalent to the artist and the music but suddenly that piece of music says exactly what you went through. Will Young's Who am I? reminds me of someone I had to let go because I was right about something.
But the best power of music is when it reminds you of people. This seldom has much to do with the score or the lyrics, it literally becomes a soundtrack to thinking about that person. The accompanying visual you get when music reminds of a person is practically cinematic... cue rotating panorama:
A great recent rack is Skizzy Mars's Moments. This was introduced to me by my son. I hear it and it does make my mind wander towards him.
The not so recent James Morrison's You Give Me Something will always take me back to an amazing first date with my late boyfriend.
On a lighter note the even more ancient Janet Kay's Silly Games just takes me to my little sister for some random reason. But then so does anything from Beyonce!
Whereas Mary Mary's Shackles has my big sister all over it.
I can't hear Tony Tribe's rocksteady version of Red Red Wine without seeing my parents dancing at my Aunty Lydia's wedding. Equally I can 't hear Desmond Decker's Israelites without seeing my Dad impressively kicking up his heals at his birthday party some ten years ago!
Each one of my friends seem to be filed in my head with a tune.
Be it classical, Jazz, Rock or pop - there's tunes out there with a unique connection to me attached.
I love that about music.. the ability to do obscure emotional things to you. Nothing elicits such a strong reaction to times feelings, places or people taking you right to it without you ever having to much more than hear.
It’s the perfect ingredient for time travel.
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