The Food of My Soul

I was trawling through video clips so that I could update my Vernacular Video Bar, and struck (for me) gold. Today I have placed two pieces for your enjoyment - one because it is technical picking as I like it (though not hard to do if you know what you are doing), and because the other made me cry (in a nice way).

This is hard on the heels of a journey that I have made this morning where, as ever, I was plugged into my iPod. 

I reflected this morning that I could live without many things physical or temporal - but not music. I can no more live without music than I can live without air, and the starvation of either makes for a poor day, I find.

The video at the top of this post is of Mark Knopfler, the only man alive who by his creativity can make me weep because I find his skill overwhelming and beautiful. His music, to me, is stunning. It is music that soars like a feather on a spring breeze, just before crashing into me like a freight-train. It is effective, lyrical, hard yet soft, winsome when needs be and technically about as good as you will find. This video is of a song that is dripping with pathos anyway, and with an orchestra, is a perfect moment. The fact is, that Mr Knopfler is a man who makes the notes that he doesn't play sound stunning too. 

In general terms, music reaches us where we wish to be reached. I played a wide array of snippets of music last night at the service I lead in the Week of Prayer for Christian unity - including Maria Callas, Metallica, Eric Clapton, a kids' nursery rhyme, Alien Ant Farm and the odd Wesleyan hymn - partly to illustrate that we are all different, but to comment that despite their differences, all of that music was on my one iPod. In its breadth I am best served by music as there are Faure days as their are Chris Rea days. Unity, I said, wasn't about being the same, but about being united in our variety.

The thing with music is that we choose what we like. We don't waste a moment of our time listening to music we dislike, so it fast becomes the purest expression of ourselves. I am not sure that much else works like that so easily and so purely in our lives. Our musical tastes have their seasons too, and it fair to say that I haven't listened to Hitman Howie Tee for a few years (though I used to listen to little else when I was a sprog).

I pity the poor soul that has to arrange my funeral. I can't even do it (an exercise I have tried to do so that Mrs Acular is spared). Music in death is as evocative as music in life, and the effort to sum me up in hymnody and song will be a rocky one. Put another way, if you want to get a real idea of who this blogger really is, listen to these videos and others as they appear - for they do a far better job than I could. 

Mindgames

This is a post derived from some random noggin-fodder from your old mucker - the Vernacular Curate. I think it; I inflict it! All heart, me ...

[1] I own a mug, bought for me as a gift and in light of my childlike passion for jet aircraft, most especially Concorde. I think that this plane is among the most beautiful of human creations and if it were ever appropriate to fall in love with, and marry, a machine - this would be my honey (with the Aston Martin DB9/DBS as my Mistress). The missus (the real fleshly one, my real honey) was drinking out of said mug this morning and the girls noticed the slender curves of Lady Concorde thereon printed. They asked about this funny looking plane, so man of heart that I am, I fired up the old iTouch and put on a film from YouTube that paid homage to the now mothballed jet. Set to Brightman/Bocelli  (sniff) - it was a lovely little piece, genuinely heart wrenching for those of us who cared about Concorde. An odd thing happened - I felt grief. Yes, truly - I felt grief. I am not sure what I was grieving for in those moments, but I was bereft for a few minutes. The mind is a strange thing.

[2] As I drove to a diocesan council for something or other earlier, I was enjoying some music being piped through the old iTouch. As it happened it was some heavy metal - how fragrant such sounds are in the believer's ear! As I had my Prince of Gadgets set to 'shuffle' I was then assaulted by some easy listening stuff and I was annoyed. Remembering that the music upon that thing is there because I bought and paid for it, and that I installed it, I pondered. My musical tastes are directly affected by the life I find myself in - and not in predictable ways. For example - in my stress -laden retail days when I drove for hours to and from work, I sought the company of Mark Knopfler et al. Nice, easy listening. When I was at College I only ever listened to Palestrina, Durufle and Byrd (and mostly Mass Settings at that) and both Knopfler and Metallica were set aside. Now I am in ministry, it seems that only loud heavy metal will do. It also dawns on me that I have had the same Metallica CD in the car for over a year - round and round and round. These are perhaps the opposite to what I may have predicted, and to be honest I don't fully understand. I am far and away happiest now, so why the agressive music? Not sure, to be honest ...

Well, dear friends, do with this as you wish. Perhaps you have had slightly 'left field' emotional moments; confess brothers and sisters! Maybe your musical appetites differ with the lives you lead; maybe you just don't listen to music. Who knows ... who knows ...