music

I guess that I am not alone in my tendency to drift away into the past. Even in cases of dementia, it is the oldest memories that tend to be the last to go, and I can understand why many people drift into that personal sea, where they can be safe and alone, wrapped in a rose tinted version of their own history.

Music does it for me. There are so many songs or snatches of music that instantly transport me to a long lost location in time and space. Though it is impossible to reach the actual co-ordinates, it sometimes feels as if I really go back. For that reason there are some songs that I find hard to play and will generally do so only when I am drunk!

Nights in White Satin by the Moody Blues, takes me to my room in College, which for a while i shared with Chris. Chris was a PE student, and although we shouldn't stereotype them, he lived up to the part. He was never the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was a nice enough guy. Chris had two things that I lacked. A record player and money. The problem was that he only had one record, and that was "Days of future passed" by the Moody BLues. He'd play this, day and night, over and over again. I suppose we both must have tired of it eventually.

Chris was the most naiive person i ever met. I recall the way that he was persuaded to sell pound notes for nineteen shillings and sixpence because someone told him that the devaluation of the pound made his money worth so much less.

Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love, from their second album also takes me back to college, and this time to a later date when I actually did have a record player. There were two of os who owned this disc and rather than compete, we'd try hard to synchronise the players so that Robert Plant would be heard from both ends of the corridor in some weird stereo. Alas, my player was slower than his and any synchrony was very brief.

Samuel Barber's Adagio for strings, is forever glued to the funeral of my father. The immediate family returned to Mother's house after the ceremony. No-one else was invited! (How weird is that?) Mother decided to play some of his records, and that was the first. There were no tears - I didn't miss him and never have.

There are so many songs from the sixties that transport me back to adolescence and the youth clubs and dances where i would yearn for the beautiful girls and never be able to talk to them. The Rolling Stones, Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown, reminds me every time of a visit to the skating rink in Birmingham. There, all night I lusted after Jane, who looked so elegant and attractive as she hurled expertly around the ice. I on the other hand in my skin tight pale blue jeans, struggled around while holding on to the rail, feeling very foolish. She didn't even know that I existed.

Like a Rolling Stone, the original version is probably my favourite song of all. It conjures the days before life became complicated. The days when relationships were a thing of the future, when I'd look at girls as objects on a high shelf; there to admire and never to hold. I was on the edge of something very significant and being there had an excitement that is so hard to recapture.

The sixties were not all wonderful and life was hard by today's standards, but all I owned then could be fitted into a small suitcase and for whatever reason, i made choices that brought me here. With every step music came along as my companion, and as such it has many tales to tell.