Prompt #58: Music
Could You Live Without Music?
Music is in my DNA. It is as important to me as love and friendship. I could live without it but I wouldn’t thrive. I wouldn’t be happy. And yet paradoxically the songs I like are the ones others find depressing and sad. I love a Leonard Cohen dirge or an old Irish lament. I’m an upbeat sort of person but I enjoy wallowing in a bit of sadness from time to time.
It is hard for me to imagine what life without music would be like. I use it to lift my spirits or transport myself out of a bad situation. A good example was my first job in London when I left university. I worked in a shop and my manager was a cruel witch but the shop’s soundtrack was good. I used to live for certain songs to come around. Forever Autumn by Justin Hayward was my favourite and it would lift me up and take me to a better place and time — back to uni where I was happy.
My earliest memories are of my Irish mother singing nursery rhymes and old Irish songs like Danny Boy to me as a small child. More recent memories are of my Scottish father singing Keep Right on to the End of the Road at his own funeral.
It was a double funeral as my parents died together. My youngest brother sang Danny Boy for my mother (I cried throughout) and we played a recording of my dad leading his choir with a rendition of Keep Right on to the…
