A little night music...

Midnight... I am suddenly wide awake having already slept for an hour or two. I get up, walk around, turn my bedside lamp on and start to read.  Nope, that's not right, I don't feel like reading, so I turn on the TV and quietly begin to channel surf.  I come across a Carole King concert from the 1970's on the BBC and settle back into my pillows to listen.

Often I think listening to music is a passive event, but last night I found myself listening differently.  I was listening whilst flashing back through memory after memory, feeling after feeling, all recovered in my mind by hearing Carole King.  She was singing all the songs from her album 'Tapestry'.  I knew every single word, every nuance of inflection in her voice was anticipated.  It was nostalgia heaven.

It got me thinking of all the music that has meant something to me in my life.  I began to remember back to when I met Ralph in Amsterdam for the first time.  There was a jukebox (!) in the student hostel we were staying in and the most popular song and the one I associate with meeting my future beloved was Donovan, singing 'Hurdy-Gurdy Man'.  Now when I hear that song I never bother to judge whether it was any good, it really wasn't, but I am so suffused with good feelings and warmth that the quality of the music doesn't matter at all.

As I lay in my bed I remembered the music that my friend Veeresh used in the first groups I participated in.  He was a master at attaching music to our emotions and I still cannot hear Marvin Gaye singing tracks from 'What's Going on' and Barry White crooning in that deep voice for me to be transported back to moments of true joy and emotional high points. It is a musical Pavlovian response.

Remember 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull' or the soundtrack of 'Chariots of Fire'?  Again this music is more than music for me,  it is a key to my past and my memory.  All of it attached to good feelings and heartful times. Likewise for Stevie Wonder and all the tracks from 'Talking Books'.  Many years ago I was fired from my traineeship with Veeresh and I still cannot listen to 'Sunshine of My Life' without stopping for a moment and remembering that painful time and my good friend, Anam.

All of this music, all of these memories came flooding back last night.  James Taylor joined Carole King on stage and I thought my memory bank would overload.  How wonderful that music from our pasts can re-inspire memories in the present and in turn those memories have the power to re-invoke such wonderful times, full of hope and promise. It made me long for those days and yet, feel so privileged to have the feelings and memories.  I did for a moment remember the younger me, the me that was not touched by cynicism and age, the me that thought it was all possible and had a moment of nostalgic regret, but that quickly passed as most memories were so very special.

I was with my father last week.  He really didn't know me at all.  As I said, it was not unexpected, but he did remember music.  When I sang to him in Yiddish he sang with me and finished the refrains of old Yiddish songs we sang 50 years ago.  Somewhere in his mind the music is still alive and triggers some long ago time.  I was really happy about that.

All of this came from thirty minutes of TV in the middle of the night.  The journey through my past and through the emotional times connected with mentally singing along last night was a joyous surprise and when I eventually fell asleep it was with a big warm smile.