Thank You For The Music

What is it about music that intrigues us so? There's something magical about combining words to a tune that captures our imagination. Like a smell, music can instantly take you to a memory, a place, a time in your life and make it just as real as it was the first time you experienced it. Ever noticed how some songs just want to make you cry because they remind you of someone or something, and others will always bring a smile to your face as they conjure memories of things long gone. Maybe that's part of the magic of music- it has a power of association 2nd to none.

More than that though, it doesn't only speak of the past, it speaks of the future and the now and about every real thing in your life. Like the poets of old who wrote their poetry, I believe, to the music in their hearts. They all had a way of creating a motion with words that could conjure a melody in your own ears just by whispering them. They could make fantasy seem more real than reality and they could transform the ordinary into the extraordinary by the simple power of the imagination. In 'Finding Neverland' we find the story of young Peter Davies inspiring Sir James Barrie to write the famous Peter Pan and in an unforgettable scene the imagination of man and boy clash:

Peter Llewelyn Davies: This is absurd. It's just a dog.
Sir James Matthew Barrie: 'Just' a dog? 'Just'? Porthos, don't listen to him. Porthos dreams of being a bear and you want to dash those dreams by saying he's 'just' a dog. What a horrible, candle-snuffing word. That's like saying 'he can't climb that mountain, he's just a man' or 'that's not a diamond, it's just a rock.' 'Just'.

James Barrie 'danced to his own tune' or 'marched to his own drumbeat'. He would not accept the 'just' of life. He would not live the 'if only' life. He heard the music and he had to dance.

William Shakespeare heard it too, so did Keats and Yeats and Wordsworth and Browning... and not just writers- musians, artists, inventors, politicians and my all time favourite- the Anonymous. The 'unsung' heroes of our time (or rather of the timeless) heard the music and understood it. And that's why they remain unsung. Think of an echo. The creator of the echo makes an original sound that bounces off various surfaces and gets distorted, sometimes beyond recognition. Better to be silent than to set off an explosion of sound that will come back sounding nothing like it was intented to. Yet all of these struck a chord with their whispers... never so loud as to cause a disturbance, but loud enough to be heard by those willing to listen.

So I encourage you to listen. Stop. Close your eyes and listen- do you hear it? No, it's not 'just' a noise- it's music.

Finding Neverland
Dead Poets Society
Amelie
Big Fish
Peter Pan