Listening to the the music that reminds you......
There's a Tom McCrae song which goes
You wake up to the sound of alarms
You're driving your fabulous car
Listening to the music that reminds you
You used to be young
This morning, I listened to some sounds I hadn't heard since the eighties and I bought in the late seventies, and it got me thinking. No, it got me feeling...
I like new musical experiences. I like finding new sounds and I love owning music that no-one else I know owns or has even heard of. No-one that is except for my big brother, who still after 43 years seems to get there one step ahead of me, at least in most matters. So, I listen to new music, I listen to internet radio to find new artists, I read reviews and buy music on a whim and a good word from John Aizlewood.
But this morning listening to the Richard Digance (yes him again) complilation I couldn't help buying from Amazon on Friday (arrived yesterday, what a service, gotta love 'em) I felt something I just don't get from the new stuff, no matter how great. It wasn't that it reminded me I used to be young, but that was in there somewhere. It was more that it polarised for a moment all of the emotions of the past 30 years into a single point of such extreme feeling that it took my breath away. It was almost a "life passing before my eyes" instant, though it was exactly that, an instant. There was no timescale, no progression, no narrative, no events, just my life in a nano-second all at once, so powerful and then gone, but it left behind such a glow. Then the narrative kicked in and the events.
We all have songs associated with memories, relationships, experiences good and bad. I have some Digance memories, not least fellow students at uni yelling for me to turn the bloody thing off.... But these weren't specific memories associated with a specific song. Half way through "Will we ever see them again?" it hit me.
Funny thing is, I know that it's done now, it served it's purpose and it won't happen again, at least not with that song, and probably not with dear old Dickie Digance, because I'll be looking and waiting for it. I guess these things need to take you by surprise.
I would never encourage anyone to live in the past. I'd always tell you to go out there and experience something new. But every so often go back and if you're lucky, and you've been good it may just happen to you in a traffic jam on the A1 on a grim, drizzly Tuesday morning in February.
You wake up to the sound of alarms
You're driving your fabulous car
Listening to the music that reminds you
You used to be young
This morning, I listened to some sounds I hadn't heard since the eighties and I bought in the late seventies, and it got me thinking. No, it got me feeling...
I like new musical experiences. I like finding new sounds and I love owning music that no-one else I know owns or has even heard of. No-one that is except for my big brother, who still after 43 years seems to get there one step ahead of me, at least in most matters. So, I listen to new music, I listen to internet radio to find new artists, I read reviews and buy music on a whim and a good word from John Aizlewood.
But this morning listening to the Richard Digance (yes him again) complilation I couldn't help buying from Amazon on Friday (arrived yesterday, what a service, gotta love 'em) I felt something I just don't get from the new stuff, no matter how great. It wasn't that it reminded me I used to be young, but that was in there somewhere. It was more that it polarised for a moment all of the emotions of the past 30 years into a single point of such extreme feeling that it took my breath away. It was almost a "life passing before my eyes" instant, though it was exactly that, an instant. There was no timescale, no progression, no narrative, no events, just my life in a nano-second all at once, so powerful and then gone, but it left behind such a glow. Then the narrative kicked in and the events.
We all have songs associated with memories, relationships, experiences good and bad. I have some Digance memories, not least fellow students at uni yelling for me to turn the bloody thing off.... But these weren't specific memories associated with a specific song. Half way through "Will we ever see them again?" it hit me.
Funny thing is, I know that it's done now, it served it's purpose and it won't happen again, at least not with that song, and probably not with dear old Dickie Digance, because I'll be looking and waiting for it. I guess these things need to take you by surprise.
I would never encourage anyone to live in the past. I'd always tell you to go out there and experience something new. But every so often go back and if you're lucky, and you've been good it may just happen to you in a traffic jam on the A1 on a grim, drizzly Tuesday morning in February.
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