and the show went on

6th February, 2010 and Sir Johnny Dankworth and his lifelong Partner and wife, Dame Cleo Laine are due to perform in concert that evening. A 40th anniversary, but Johnny had died that day in hospital.
82 year old Cleo, out of respect for John, went ahead with the show and asked John’s friend Andy to take John’s role in the piece that they were about to play, because, as Cleo said,
“He would have wanted to play this piece if he were here and I know that the one person that he would have entrusted it to would be to Andy ….”
It just make me think of just how important such a meaningless thing as music is. Music, in itself has no purpose other than the importance we attach to it and that attachment makes it so extremely important!
If you ever wish to invoke a memory, refer to the music that was playing at the time and watch how peoples’ state begins to change as soon as the music plays out and their memory recreates.
Yet music is timeless but so clearly leaves pegs in our timelines.
‘Sound pegs’  to which we attach emotional states and visual images.
‘Sergeant Pepper Lonely Heart’s Club Band’, played during the summer when I left school. ‘Stephen Stills’ solo album played when I was 21. The Doobie Brothers ‘Captain and Me’ had a profound impact on me when I first moved away from my home town, in 1973 and so they roll on, sounds as time pegs, each invoking emotional states from me but the biggest emotion of all … familiarity.
Familiarity because each piece of music is an old friend.

What songs or pieces of music are really important to you?

image from play.com amongst others