Music and Memories

I was sat in my car, waiting for my son to emerge from school at the end of the day. I was reading with the radio set to a popular station that plays an eclectic mix of tunes, past and present - just what I like in my music. One of the features of the afternoon show is that someone picks their oldies, songs from their youth or ones that are not current chart-toppers, or Spotify favourites, or whatever is used to gauge music popularity these days.

These oldies are a great way to indulge in nostalgia and I often think about the music that I would choose if I were inclined to send my list in. It would not be an easy task.

And then Gordon Lightfoot's "Sundown" came on. Popular staple of Canadian radio but not so frequently heard on British radio. I felt a jolt of recognition and delight in my chest, a not unpleasant sensation at all and all the more gratifying for its unexpectedness. I love this song and I haven't heard it for a long time. And I was transported immediately by the gentle music of this folk singer, back to the time that I lived in Calgary at the base of the Canadian Rockies.

Although I am British, I have only recently moved back here after having spent more than seven years living in Canada and I miss it. Who wouldn't? I mean, seven years is a long time to live anywhere and Canada was particularly special, especially the time spent in Calgary.

Firstly, it is a great city. No more or less than the other cities that I lived in in Canada but Calgary has that west feel - cowboy hats and ranches, a celebration of the wildness of the west, all wrapped up into one package and its cherry being the Stampede. It was very different as a place to live.

Secondly, the Rockies are on your doorstep and they are overwhelming in their beauty, wildness and their offer of adventure. I used to see them on the horizon on my way to the supermarket and they never failed to draw my attention. Can you imagine that? Seeing the snow-tipped grey masses ahead of you as you head to Safeway to get some grapes? I never, ever got tired of it.

Thirdly, I left behind a life there, full of friends and memories and warmth as well as new experiences, like watching kids chase pigs at a rodeo, kayaking on the most beautiful lakes, canyon walking both in the mountains and the desert, and bear watching. Alberta is a diverse place.

It was my home.

Why did Gordon Lightfoot take me back there? Easy. I heard that song lots of times while I lived there and this is partly due to Raymond Reddington and the awesome soundtrack that accompanied his criminal escapades in "The Blacklist". I watched this on the TV while I was there. James Spader is a great actor. I heard it there first. But then, I heard it a lot more. Generally, as a mother of boys, I heard it on the way to places I was taking them where it played on the radio - to football, friends' houses, school, etc.

Gordon also played at one of the casinos that we went past on our way to the mountains so his name would flash before my eyes on a billboard - this may or may not have happened simultaneously with the playing of his tunes but there was a high likelihood. He was around. A lot. And this is a good thing as his music is melodic and soothing and warm.

Hearing Gordon again made me really emotional and it was a timely reminder of the impact that music has to evoke memories and take us back. I'm not sure how it does it but the only other thing that is comparable is smell and even then, I'm not sure that smell has the means to be so precise in where it takes you. I have particular places associated with music. Coldplay's "Paradise", for instance. You are going to think that this is trite but it always reminds me of Australia.

I lived in Western Australia for almost three years back when my boys were just itty bitty, before we left for Canada. It was a wonderful time and I miss Australia very much for precisely the same reasons I miss Canada: the people, the experience, the beauty. Beaches, laid-back lifestyle, nature in its rawest form. Strange animals that defy rational thought but appear bouncing in front of you nonetheless, as well as those that lurk in the depths to take a chunk out of you, if you're not careful. Its redness and heat and pale, brittle foliage and spikes. Venom everywhere!

It was my home.

Coldplay was on the radio. As well as AC/DC and Cold Chisel and Milky Chance.

And when I hear these bands, immediately, I am transported. The feelings these songs evoke, I feel. The warmth and sun, I feel. The flashes of car journeys to the leisure centre where my youngest is singing "Paradise!" loudly with gusto but indistinctly word-wise from his car seat, I am there. The crash of the waves on white sands by the bucket and spade, I am there. The waiting in the playground at the end of the school day in the shade, I am there, sitting on a wall by the roses again. Faces, sounds, experiences - they all arrive again, fleetingly but with enormous power.

It is a wonderful experience but it is tinged a little with sadness as whilst I have returned in my mind, I will never return to that place again physically, and there is a little pain in the reliving, a smarting. I can feel the tears approach.

Music is an enormous part of our lives.

The power of music and this discussion has been prompted in no small part as a result of thinking that using music would be a great way to frame your memoirs. This is nothing particularly new as "Desert Island Discs" on BBc radio has proved. But I have recently finished a book by a man called Jack Gohn, who did just this in "What I was Listening to When...": he took tunes from his timeline and provided a playlist so that you could read the chapter to which the song referred whilst playing the music.

What a treat this book was! It was varied and educational and his writing was clear until, through his remembrances of the music, and his words about his life, I was reliving his existence. Well, maybe not quite that but I was privy to a fair amount of it and the music did much to add to the atmosphere of the reading in the same way that John Williams' musical score does to a film.

Imagine Star Wars without the music. Or Superman. Or Indiana Jones. Or E.T. I'll stop now.

And it was all there. Best of times, worst of times and all that. Because music is evocative of all feeling, I think, whether we want it to be or not.

Music takes me back to bad times too. I have always used music as a crutch; a support to lift; a teleporter. When I was at university, I was a bit depressed. I didn't realise it at the time and I wouldn't change it, even though I was miserable for a lot of it, but it was one of the singularly weird times of my life where I did not like being inside my head. It made me insecure on a level that I have not revisited since and would not care to. I am stoical about this - that experience makes me who I am now. Without it, I would be someone entirely different and I don't like the thought of that and so, I am reconciled with those darker days. This is the surety that age brings you.

But looking back, as well as some solid friendships that I have taken into my mature years, which were, and are, so, so important, I can honestly say that it was music that got me through.

An odd mix of Clannad, Mike Oldfield, Crowded House and Eagles are the main supporters, the diverters of home sickness and the motivators to get the work done. They soothed me to sleep and made me forget my misery for a time. They made me think of ethereal Celtic worlds and chimes and flutes and New Zealand and standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona. They took me away.

Now, when I hear them, they take me back, but I don't greet these remembrances with sadness. Actually, I quite like the fact that they allow me to face what I was then, to see how far I've come, to see how different I am. But it all started there.

And music still has the power to remind and prod and prompt a revisit. Often, when a song comes on the radio, I find myself saying to my kids, "This song always reminds me of..." and it can be an incident, a person, a conversation. Usually, it is more general in that it reminds me of one of the cities that I've lived in and the daily activities that I shared with my closest, dearest people. It is the musical equivalent of the reminders that you get on Facebook from the same date in years previous - Timehop, I think it is called. These are a treat, especially if they are photos that were posted at the time or the funny things that your kids say like they're going to climb Everest today and they think it will take them about 10 hours; or bizarre questions like how do ants cuddle each other?

Music has the same power, maybe not as directly as it is not a visual stimulus but emotively, it is forceful and unrelenting. I let it come at me and like a white-frothed wave, angry and incoming, crashing from above, I let it blast into me and hit me with its spume and spray.

And this may be indulgent of me, maybe in some instances, a little masochistic, but I have compiled my own playlist and I replay it regularly, full of tunes that chart my life, mostly ones that I want to sing along to while I'm flipping pancakes or have my hand thick with bread dough or pulling weeds out in the garden but the process of listening to them and reflecting on me is one of which I never get tired. Sometimes, a dance tune will get me dancing like there is no-one else around until I'm out of breath. Or a hymn will take me back to church with my grandparents, long gone now. The Tragically Hip always throws me for a loop and anything from "The Lost Boys" soundtrack makes me a teenager again.

I will never tire of this. Music will always be a part of my life and I notice that my eldest son, who is not having an easy time of it at the moment, but who is ploughing on the best he can, uses music in the same way. He escapes for a brief moment and savours the joy, the solace, the respite that music can bring. It is just one of the things about him which makes me proud, to see his resilience and his self-care and awareness.

So all that is left to say is, in the words of Abba, "Thank You for the Music", not merely for the message it conveys in the title but also because it is a song of significance, which always reminds me of one of the most important people in my life and long Abba fan, my mum. And will continue to do this long beyond the typing today, into the future.

So thank you, music. Here's to a continued and long relationship, full of all of the things, new and old, that life can throw at us, conquered together.