Brothers in Arms...

I've finally caught up with Bands of Brothers, well over a decade after i had first intended. The words of Churchill spring to mind- "Never was so much owed by so many to so few"

As you get older, you learn the value of life. You realise how devastating loss can be, how traumatic injuries, both physical and mental, can be for those who suffer them; and those who bear witness to them. Watching a series like Band of Brothers really reminds me just how lucky I am to live in (my) conflict free zone. I've had the misfortune to see someone being shot and while it was traumatic, it's something that i (hopefully!) don't expect to see ever again. I didn't know the guy who was shot, other than to know him as a face about town, and so, the loss of his life; whilst devastating for his family, meant very little in the grand scheme of my life. 

Yet i've known soldiers my age who have had to watch their "brothers", their friends, their colleagues, lose their lives or be wounded and still have to carry on each day. I know a man who lives with the memory of shooting a child suicide bomber. War has fewer rules nowadays, some enemies don't do uniforms, and it's innocents who suffer for it. The difference now is the lack of support for them when they're out of uniform, when they're on civvie street, either on leave, or permanently. It's not a life i could comprehend leading, ever.

Obviously, in WWII, young men didn't have much of a choice to go into action-some flourished, some faltered, muchlike mankind itself. And that to me, is what makes their sacrifice all the greater. To know that you have no choice but to go out and kill or be killed as a matter of war is something i (luckily) will never have to do. 

It's surreal to think that just a few countries away, war is waging....in the Ukraine, in Syria...and i'm ashamed to say that the news of the murders, the car bombings, and the suicide bombings in the Middle East are all things that only briefly catch my attention on the news, much in the same jaded way the bombings and punishment beatings in NI used to when i was younger. Yet now again, something hits home, and makes the concept of what others are going through that bit clearer. For me, it was the news that to date (31/01/14) almost 2000 people have been killed since the start of the Syrian peace talks on Jan 22nd. That's a regular attendance at The Showgrounds to me. The thoughts of the physical space required by that amount of people, the thoughts of looking around that stadium to see almost 2000 dead bodies did, and still does, bring such sadness on me....and that's only the death toll over a week. Over the last decade, thousands have died-all in the name of a "civil" war.

Later this year, the world will begin to commemorate WW I "The Great War".... a war to end all wars....how little we've learnt over a century...

...covered....

Sometimes in life, there are songs that can never be covered satisfactorily. There's always something about the newer version that lacks something of the original, be it the heart, the essence, the message of a piece....or something simpler, like a tambourine missing from a beat.

It's rare that I hear a cover that hits me almost as hard as the original did (Mr. Cash being one exception that proves that rule.) But tonight (this morning?!) I watched and heard this video for the first time. I'm currently listening to it for the fifth time in a row. It's amazing. It. Is. Amazing.






Singer-nails it. Musicians-nail it. Choir-nails it. And despite their obvious talent, at the same time, you can almost feel the reverence they feel for the song, for it's creators who are watching their every note....it's something else.


That's what I love about music. It has that ability to take you away, deep inside, to transport you somewhere special, to take you away from where-ever you are to somewhere else entirely. I have said many times over the years that without music, I'd be a very different person. My life, like many other people's has it's own soundtrack, it's own important (and unimportant!) moments scored by a melody, a lyric that, when I hear them, transports me back to a time in place. Lost in You will always remind me of a soulmate, The Lonesome Boatman of a teenage funeral, The Scientist will remind me of hearing my first niece use full sentences (singing along bless her!) and the song above was one I first heard in the wee small hours on a show called Maloney After Midnight over 15 years ago around the time that I realised insomnia was a friend that was here to stay.

Even on my first listen, it blew me away. From it's soft stringed gentle opening, to the beauty of it's lyrics ("there's a feeling I get, when I look to the west....and my spirit is crying for leaving...") to it's pulsating rocked out ending, it captivated me. I have listened to it many many times now for over half my life, growing almost slightly jaded with it as the years pass by. Yet the version I'm listening to tonight has brought it back to life for me. Honestly, everytime it gets to 3.25 in the song, a giant grin starts to spread across my face, and by 3.45, my head starts nodding along to the solo, barely stopping short of headbanging along- bringing to life some of the latter lyrics of the song.."and if you listen very hard...the tune will come to you at last."
Music is something more powerful than any drug I've ever taken (including the ones I'm currently on for my knee!) and it's ability to change a mood, a situation, a memory, is one I constantly seem to under-estimate. Last week, I purchased an album from a new Irish group called The Gloaming. Ethereally beautifully brilliant doesn't come close to doing the album justice. There are several tracks on the album that I almost feel I shouldn't be breathing when I listen to them, such is their beauty. It's an album full of songs that, prior to last week, I didn't know. And yet, within a week, they feel like they've been in my life forever, bringing comfort to cold days, bringing back long-lost memories without any connection to those days when those memories were being created, and just being an example of how music has the ability to move feelings and emotions that had nothing to do with the music originally.

That, to me, is one of the most amazing things in life- the power and beauty of music. It's ability to gift you the impossible, to create a new emotion within you, the ability to feel like you're time-traveling just by closing your eyes and listening to a song, the ability to change a mood instantly, the ability to re-invent something you've heard a thousand times before, and, without changing it, re-create it for you so it feels like it did the first time you heard it.

I've lost track of the amount of conversations I've had about music, about songs, about covers, about new tracks, about old....just this evening I was getting more recomendations from a friend about new & old music that I had (prior to discovering that Zep cover!) been listening to and enjoying. It's surreal now that, despite all the music out there, I'm still hungry for more, be it old, be it new. What I find even more surreal is that sometimes, a melody that I may have heard many times before will speak to me strangely someday, and suddenly it becomes an important track, an important piece of music to have in my life.

This post may not make much sense to you...tbh, I'm finding it hard to put into (eloquent) words myself just how important it is to me. Suffice to say that, in all times of my life, good and bad, music is something that has helped me, and to finish on something that might make a little sense.... Music is something that I can never *ever* imagine my life without and to paraphrase a little...

Music is nothing without life, and life is nothing without music.

Randomness from a hospital bed...

So yet again in my life, i find myself wide awake in a hospital bed in the wee small hours, with a swollen, bruised and bloodied knee after my 7th bit of surgery. The new kneecap is behaving but, alas,the scar tissue and ligaments in the knee aren't. What was to be a day procedure has turned into an overnight stay.

But, this made me smile....a bunch of towels at the end of my bed. Douglas Adams would be pleased...