Thank You For The Music

"Eh, how come ah, most of the music that you listen to is so sad one ah?" she asked.

Random Memories: Eight Years Old

He opens the cardboard box, and it is a treasure chest of music cassettes. His untrained eye could only marvel at the variety of the music there, turning each cassette in turn. There were names on the covers he was vaguely familiar with- Frank Sinatra, The Beatles - and those that weren't too familiar to him - Paul Mauriat, James Galway.

He brings all the newfound treasures to the not-so-branded radio that sat in their living room. One by one he feeds the maxell tapes into the belly of the hungry radio, rewarding each meal with music that permeated the living room. There were some that he took an instant liking to, and others which made him lose interest and turn off the music within seconds.

The box was a gift from a church member who himself would turn blind one day. He owned a music store, and it was given as an gift of encouragement to this boy's father who had recently lost his ability to walk.

The music brought a new sense of hope in the family.

He remembers sitting in the living room, sprawled out on the couch reading in the fluorescent light of the living room, his father sitting just a reach away in his wheelchair, doing his accounts for his clients.

The strains of the flute from a new favourite, James Galway, filled the air between them. There was this shared harmony between father and son - both hearts moving in time to the haunting lilt of the flute - which needed no words to express.

Random Memories: Ten Years Old

He is sitting in the back of the car, happy to be going up to Penang again. The music for the rides on these trips were so important - last year they had learnt The Beatles tape almost by heart

Ah, look at all the lonely people!
He's a real nowhere man, sitting in his nowhere land, thinking all his nowhere plans for nobody
I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me

They were singing the songs word for word by the end of the trip, having heard the cassette for the eighth time running.

There was the year of the Greek songbird, Nana Moskouri

Goodbye Papa, it's hard to die, when all the birds are singing in the sky
Try to remember the kind of September, when grass was green, and the grain was yellow
I believe in angels, something good in everything I see, I believe in angels, when I know the time is right for me

and of ABBA, of course

If you change your mind, I'm the first in line
Voulez vous, ah ha! take it merrily, ah ha! Now is all we have, ah ha! Nothing promised, no regrets
Super trooper, lights are gonna find me, but I won't be blue

The three children would sit in the back of the car, their juvenile voices joining John, Paul, George and Ringo or Bjorn, Benny, Agnetha and Anny-Frid as tiny backup singers.

Random Memories: Fourteen Years Old

He is in secondary school, in the afternoon session, and the routine was, go to school from 1 to 6.45 pm, come home and have dinner, then sleep until about ten or eleven at night, and then wake up to do homework until about two or three in the morning.

It was eerie past the midnight hour. His Dad would retire to bed, as would the rest of the family, and the silence was only punctuated by the buzz of the fluorescent light in the background, and the slow rhythmic creak of the ceiling fan.

He would try to drown the silence by switching on the radio quietly. Sometimes he would play the tapes and have Frank Sinatra help him try to work out a mathematical sum or paint a mountain scenery. And then there were other times when he would switch the tiny knob from TAPE to FM, and listen to the English stations at night.

One night, while trying to figure out Malaysian geography, he heard the music that he would listen to for a long time. The DJ was taking time to introduce a new artiste every night, playing several songs from the particular artiste, and that night he learnt the name of his new love. Basia.

Random Memories: Love

He remembers attributing songs to certain crushes in his life, growing up.

He remembers the girl on the bus, with her silky brown skin. He would sing Bryan Adams' Everything I Do, I Do It For You quietly across the unbridgable distance that was the front and the back seat of the bus.

He remembers his biggest crush in college. And Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You was ringing through his mind everytime she walked by.

He's still saving his love songs and lullabies.

Random Memories: Eighteen Years Old

He was going to go off to Singapore to study, the one in his class that had made it good. He was reluctant to leave, as all his friends, his life, were all here in his tanahair.

They met him individually to say their goodbyes. One good friend from the year above him gave him a farewell letter, which made him smile despite his sadness. "GOOF DUCK!" it said in a deliberately dirty and dyslexic way of wishing him all the best. Along with the letter came a cassette, and the letter insisted that he listened to the first song.

It was Visions of a Sunset by Shawn Stockman, and the song built up to a climax which pulled at his heartstrings, the crescendo of violins explaining what he could not. Where words had failed, music stepped in and embraced him.

-------------------------------------------

"Eh, how come ah, most of the music that you listen to is so sad one ah?" she asked.

Because it has been his constant companion - his soothing balm on the open wounds inflicted by life, it is his mental photographs to memories past; it is how he falls in love.