Magical encounters

Sachi's last post made me think a lot, about unconditional love, this love we get and feel from our children, our family, our friends when we are lucky to have real ones, but also from Nature. But right now, my mind is turned towards a kind of magic that has always, always rhythmed my days. The magic of music.
This magic has played many, many tricks, eased so many tensions and brightened so many days in my life. I hardly spend a day without music. I am so ecclectic that my musical tastes range from country to classic via rap. There is a music for every moment, every mood. Through hardship and writing, I get carried away by electro music or opera; bluegrass cheers me like nothing else; rock is a regular companion; there's pop rock for cleaning up the house or dancing with the kids, and there is jazz for cozy evenings...and then, there are the magical encounters. A piece of music that suddenly plays to your heart's secret longings; a song that briskly echoes your mind's ramblings; a tune that makes unrealized feelings rush out, and tears flow.
Last week end I was coming back from a place of both love and pain, one of those places we have to go sooner or later, in one way or another. I was driving, and suddenly there was this music on the radio...

Brothers in arms - Dire Straits

I hadn't heard this song for ages, for years actually. And with the notes, another era of my life came back. A real little 'Madeleine de Proust'. The magic transportation to times when I was safely tucked in life between a mother and a father. The magic times when family was still family. This song means a lot to me, it is also so bitter-sweet, so sad, and yet it transpires with some undergound hope, some nostalgic wisdom. The words reminded me of Sachi's beautiful ideal and aims, too. An aim that I myself tend to forget these days. There is I realize too much anger in my life, too much to my own taste anyway. Life brings wrath in unexpected ways, and if we want to keep our existence beautiful and peaceful, we need some regular reminder of how anger can invade our days in mean, tricky, disguised ways. When I stop and think of it, I know perfectly where my anger comes from; but in my daily life it sometimes crawls back under false pretence. It is not a glass broken by mistake or the fact of being late at work that actually makes me enraged, it is this place of love and pain I have to visit regularly.
And with only one song, the lesson is taught again. We 'have just one world, but we live in different ones'. We get so foolish, so often. My own little personal grief makes me live in a world where anger invites herself whereas I should dwell on this unity Sachi has mentioned times in her posts. This togertherness that means we're all now and ultimately on the same boat. We live under the same sun, whether we are ill or healthy, whether all our loved ones are with us or not, whatever the age, the income, the country, the beliefs.
On another trip to this place of love and pain, I heard this song.

Là où je t'emmenerai (The place I will take you to)

Another happy magical encounter. This song is about the pledge a man makes to his beloved. It is a song of love and dedication, of genuine gentleness, a song I sang softly to my babies when they were very little. It is about loving someone, and protecting, and caring. And it reminded me on the way home, to my beloved sweethearts, that love should always come first. Caring before feeling angry; protecting before feeling resentment; moving forward instead of going back; dedication before vindication; peace before sadness. Music sometimes helps me remember that there is peace and beauty within myself, I just have to allow them in my life, my life as it is. We just have to remember that love comes first and must not be overshadowed by pain. Just like there can be war within ourselves, there can be peace, too.

Wishing you a beautiful day of love and peace. Sound a little hippie there? Well, I like the sound of it ;)
Val