All my life music has meant the world to me-
from birth, and forevermore, music of every voice, style, and tempo,
has seeded and grown in my mind like a tree.
All my life I have grown to love, cherish,
and make music a part of my daily routine-
music binds the days and the years,
and allows me to feel the memories of my life
and to understand there meaning.

My love of all music was gifted to me early on when I was a child-
my parents were the best: every night I would lie in my bed
and fall asleep to music and voices that made me dream and made me smile;
however, because I was so young, I didn’t understand the music’s beauty,
I didn’t understand it’s power-
I didn’t understand the images that my imagination created from the sound, that glowed, and grew, and awakened my creativity fire.

Every Sunday evening, my Mum and Dad would sit down with my sister and I,
and we would listen to my parents record collection:
gorgeously packaged black discs-
grooved and ingrained with some of the most incredible music of human creation;
songs about everything: love, heartbreak,
the past, the present, the potential of the future,
songs of dreams that are important to nurture.

My parents played songs that made me laugh,
and songs that made me cry:
one song in particular, Clannad’s beautiful ‘Theme from Harry’s Game’-
from the instant that I heard the first note,
and throughout the entire song,
my eyes would be like twin waterfalls;
but why I was crying, I knew not why-
even at such a young age, the profound beauty of the song
overwhelmed me, made me feel something, haunted me,
as it still does to this day-
the song that gets more and more beautiful to me with every play.

Over the years, my Dad would listen to Mike Oldfield,
The Beatles, John Lennon, and he would would say to me,
with tears in his eyes, that one day “you will listen to this on your own,
and you will love it as I do- because you and I are the same;
but, unfortunately, as I got older, all that I wanted to do was play video games.
Then, one Sunday, while my parents were out of the house for the night,
when I was about sixteen-years-old, alone in my room,
my Dads words spoke to me, and compelled me to fill the silence,
and give in to a truth that I could no longer fight.
So I went downstairs, opened my parents record cabinet,
took out and un-sleeved a vinyl LP called “Imaginations”,
I put the disc on the turntable, lowered the needle,
and then I stood in silence, in the darkness, with my eyes closed,
as the music that echoed from the speakers of the stereo
unified explanations, generations, and gave rise to revelations.
It all made sense, the universe made sense:
music, dreams, nature, words, voices, colours, began to condense-
I felt like life had come full-circle,
and that I now understood
everything;
however, this new enlightenment only made me ask new questions of life
that came to me like a flood.

As I have grown older, I have begun to realize more and more
that my connection and my love for beautiful music
has gifted me a great many of the treasures that I see everyday,
and for which I am unspeakably grateful for:
my friends, my music heroes, my favourite songs, musicians, singers-
like BT, and the beautiful Kirsty Hawkshaw.

I do not make music, but music is a part of me.
Music always will be what wakes me to invite in a new day;
music always will be the friend to assure me that everything will be ok.

My family are not musicians, but music is a part of us.
Music is what brings us together, music helps us dream,
music is what makes us feel free-
whenever I hear a piece of music, or a song,
that takes a hold of my heart and my mind,
so much so that I cannot express what it means to me in words,
I always think back to when I was a boy,
sitting down with my parents, in our home,
enjoying the wonder of a Sunday Symphony.

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