Ramblings #6 - Music and Me

"Without music, life would be a mistake."

My first memory of classical music comes from my father playing Beethoven on the cassette player when I could barely reach the top shelf of the fridge. Travelling in this dusty attic of a mind, I find those innocent blissful days before youtube and streaming became bywords – where it was just me rewinding the tape when the player button committed mischief and failed to do the same. Giggling from the tickle of the plastic edges as I searched ambiguously for the piece my ear yearned for.

Ah time. Has it been 10, 15 years? Maybe more…maybe less. Memory can be cruel at times in its forgetfulness. I just remember I loved them all without ever knowing them intimately. I loved them when they played in the background of cartoons like Tom & Jerry, I loved them when I heard them build emotion in my favorite movies. But it was only in growing older that the sin of knowledge and choice made its way into my mind.

There was a vacuum – a dark passage where other interests gathered and I lost this world. But it came to me from another new obsession. Emerging from Japan, anime had entered our lives. Whether it was from the new kid on the television block called Animax or the now long lost 5 pm toonami block on Cartoon Network, I don’t remember. And there in all its musical glory was Nodame Cantabile.

It brought back those nostalgic days of listening on tape, and this time I took note of every symphony, sonata – and an air of amazement swept through me as I realized I had heard all this long before as the echoes of my childhood returned to me. I had been listening to these maestros all along in every note that blew by me like a sweet winter breeze, carried on the way to another day of work on the train and entrenched in my humming enveloping moments of joy and sorrow.

Some other avenues were there, maybe lesser in some eyes but not in mine – there was a fantastical world where I could play the violin trying to emulate my favorite actor’s actions in a movie. But alas, my fermented attention deprived mind never came around to it, though the violin remains my ear’s favorite instrument – whether in the enigmatic strains of Ben Chan or the captivating delights of Lindsey Stirling.

Today, I rediscover Chopin and Strauss in new ways, with them providing pleasant company to my reading habits. Unlike modern music which depends so much on lyrics that distract from the worlds I hold in my hands (not that I dislike modern music, but I feel the story in the lyrics deserve my undivided attention).

So when I play Chopin’s Noctures on my mobile’s music player (ah technology!) and slip into bed with a beloved classic, I feel that it is me…just me with myself. Alone and yet rich in camaraderie. Intertwined with the music and the moment.

"Ce que ! Pas de star, et vous êtes aller en mer ? Marcher au pas, et vous n'avez pas la musique ? Voyager, et vous n'avez pas de livre ? Ce que ! Pas d'amour, et vous allez vivre ?"

(What! No star, and you are going out to sea? Marching, and you have no music? Traveling, and you have no book? What! No love, and you are going out to live?)