Dancing About Architecture

I like music. That must be pretty clear to anyone just by looking at the titles to most of my posts.

One of my strongest early memories is of music.

I must have been about seven or eight years old and I was playing at my aunt and uncle's house while my parents were away for the evening. My aunt was getting my little cousins ready for bed and I was looking through her record collection. She had a stack of 45's by the stereo and I was intrigued by some of the titles and names of bands. The Beach Boys and Petula Clark and The Monkees. Heroes and Villains with its bright orange label and a horde of shiny black disks with titles like Delilah, I'm A Believer and Good Vibrations.

I asked if I could play some of these records and my aunt, bless her soul forever, said yes. I picked out one by a group called The Beatles which intrigued me. I don't recall being conscious of music before that time but I remember asking myself, what kind of music would someone calling themselves after bugs make anyway?

The moment, the very instant that I heard I Want to Hold Your Hand, I knew that I had stumbled upon something astounding, amazing, astonishing and so on down the alphabet. I played this tune over and over again probably twenty times. I had simply never heard anything like this before. My life as they say in clichés, changed. It spoke to me somehow. It seemed to be what I later found out was an “aha” moment, a satori maybe; not quite a deeper understanding of reality but an awareness that there was a reality and it was not what I was used to seeing every day. The closest I can find for expressing what happened is - something opened up for me. I realize that it is very difficult to use words for this type of experience; there simply are no words for this deeply felt, almost spiritual episode.

Over the years I had similar sensations when listening to music on my stereo or at live shows. A Midnight Oil show on a hot summer evening in a small club in 1984. The Mahavishnu Orchestra's first album, The Inner Mounting Flame in 1986. The Tragically Hip in a sweaty university cafeteria in 1985. Yes' Fragile album in 1979, Queen's You're My Best Friend in 1978, Keith Jarrett's Koln concert, Husker Du...

Never with the same intensity as the first time but “aha” moments none the less.

There is always only one first time.




This post is...for absent friends...