“Dad! Turn the music down! I’m trying to get to sleep!”. I’m lying on the sofa clutching a bottle of red wine, with Pink Floyd’s “One of these days I’m going to tear you into little pieces” playing LOUD … It’s the only way of erasing the day’s activities – 8 solid hours of configuring and testing firewalls on network routers. My son’s pleading forces my conscience, and I put headphones on, but it’s not the same without the floor shaking with the bass.
Loud Rock at home is a luxury: My parents loved opera and ‘the singing of the moorland streams’, beautiful, but not something you can headbang to. University was all diligent students in cramped halls of residence. Then I married a lady who was lovely in many ways, but had very sensitive hearing. After she’d had enough, I lived next to a predatory gay man, who took any loud noise as an excuse to come round, complain, and try to force himself upon me. Next, 3 years on a boat with no mains, so loud music meant doing without lights for a week. Finally I lived in a place in the country with no near neighbours, and had the bliss of excessive volume whenever I wanted for 3 Loud Years … before the children arrived.
Music has always been core to my life: Beyond mind-numbing Heavy Rock, I find music essential for getting from one space into another – relaxation, housework, catharsis, or simply a good bop. I also find great inspiration when I’m deeply absorbed in music, it reminds me I’m human and alive, and as long as these remain true, there’s still the possibility of pursuing my creative vision.
I’m fascinated by the process of making music. My parents owned a piano, and as a child I spent hours trying to work out what notes liked each other. The consequence was 6 years of crushing classical lessons, after which I merely achieved an elementary certificate. But the theory side of things gave me some interesting answers to what notes might get along together … enough to start improvising, which for me continues to be a process of experimentation.
This was not something appreciated immediately by others. “Stop that bloody racket” was a common response when, bored in a pub, I would sit down at the piano and try out something more interesting.
When I was helping nurse my terminally ill grandmother, I agreed to forego the pleasure of improvised music for 6 months, to allow her a peaceful death. Half an hour after she died, I played an improvised lament, and oddly enough nobody has ever asked me to stop playing since.
But where do I go next with this? There is great potential combining music with ritual, some of which I have explored … but it’s too easy to fall into the simplistic arena of chants, hymns and community singing … the possibilities are so much more expansive, but do I have the imagination to expand?
