Music past and present.

Ive just spent the last few months at Festivals and Events while listening to the same three albums—Ben Howard, Every Kingdom (2012); Snow Patrol: A Hundred million suns (2008); and the soundtrack to my life or at least the film Almost Famous—on infinite repeat. All the tracks were a mix of CD and those I had downloaded from the iTunes Music Store. And though I also listen to music in the car, on airplanes, and while running, given the amount of time that I spend on my blog, I listen to music constantly while writing, over the past five years I have probably listened to more music in the form of CD mainly because I like to have something to keep. 

You might suppose that repetition would have dulled my brain power—this must have been the fiftieth or sixtieth time I’d listened to the track ‘Every Kingdom’ over the past two months—but on the contrary it abruptly seemed to have heightened my love of the album, I feel music has helped me break through life, to put it simply, having a ready access to the music, to have flooded my ears with sudden understanding that things were going to be ‘alright in life’. I’m no soppy person; I want to say that right off. I have no idea what life is about, or how to follow the path of success/confidence or happiness. But it struck me all at once that the sound quality of the music I’d been listening to so heavily, with the indirect attentiveness I give music when I’m writing, was my world, safe; all bright and no unhappiness. It sounds like every day in life should, in fact; and not only did it sound like my world, but it never left me, even in years. The only thing that upset me is in the knowledge that not only are CD’s backdated but the record players are further away from us all, all our moments in life. No iPod or Speaker box will give respect to music, or an iPod through factory-installed speakers?

Not many know that downloads are digitized music itself “compressed,” “lousy,” reduced to a state of nightmare for people that work in the music industry. With the possible exception of books, I love music more than I love anything in my life that doesn’t include my family or friends by the way. At one time, I now realized, I had known how to express and indulge and nourish that love: with the help of my Father who has a collection of records, a record player my Mam had since childhood, and a pair of speakers that were themselves ‘Vintage’. 

My communion money bought my first stereo system, a ‘ghetto blaster’. Throw yourself further into my years and I received a CD player from Santa when I was about 15 years old. The memories of live bands back in Co. Clare. I seem to recall that it was here I learned of Christy Moore, and I remember my Father telling me that music would always be my friend, he was right.

I have seen tapes turn to CD to iPod to download, like all the stars going out one by one, and how that would not necessarily be such a bad thing, but I still grieve. I never hear those songs I did as a child quite the same way as I did on record. Music was the first passion I ever knew. The passion you talk about to new friends, to people you have known all your life, the truth I was then only just beginning to grasp: that my life was being marked and that those moments were built, in turn, out of the songs I heard.

You know that moment when you slide the first record from its sleeve, touching only the label, pressing the play button, and the gears engaged with a whirr, and with a second’s notice the song begins into the outermost groove of the record. 

I wish I could thank music with a hug and a handshake, and that when I walk out of this world on my final exit from my life. When all those friends close doors, and turned up the volume, and sail not only into their worlds of music but mine too. I will never be alone in the middle of it all, neither will you? 

And now here I sit, with ‘James Vincent Brown’ playing, the sound quality is probably still not anything close to what I could get. I will sail on, through thousands more songs, Festivals and gigs, hoping and wishing, chasing that mystery, that sometimes our biggest love is not a person, but the gift of sound.