Passion's Puppet
“Live not as though there were a thousand years ahead of you. Fate is at your elbow; make yourself good while life and power are still yours.”
Music.
Yes, to me music is the start and end and everything in between. It is the goodness, the evidence of the divine, the transportation from the banal the sublime. It's felt in the fragile wistfulness of Debussy's Claire du Lune, the raw power of the Pistol's God Save the Queen, in the once and future sound of Video Killed the Radio Star, right through to the aching nostalgia of Fairport Convention's 'Meet on The Ledge'.
It is the bounce of an 80's disco as - a then - unfamiliar Madonna's 'Holiday' hits you through a throbbing bass vibrating the floor, the smell of perfume and the heady mix of cheap lager and youthful camaraderie.
It is the soaring guitar riff of The Charlatan's 'Just Lookin'' cutting through the air at Brighton's Event.
It is Lisa Stansfield and Blue Zone at Rochdale Football Club in 1986 - all mullets and big glasses.
It is a drunken Tim standing onstage at a Chicago Blues Club in a long overcoat playing and singing 'Mannish Boy' with all the passion tequila and respectful homage can muster.
It is in the choral movement of Beethoven's Ninth and it's epic climax - power, grace, counter melody. This is the riff-heavy 5th to the max with God thrown in.
It is the feel and beauty of Vivaldi's Winter Largo from the Four Seasons, impossible not to believe that this is the greatest melody ever written
It is a fifteen year old boy listening through expensive headphones to Jumping Jack Flash for the first time and being blown away by the power of rock.
It is in the poignant sadness of The Winner Takes it All as it plays through a soon-to-be-empty Brighton flat, a too-painful soundtrack to a failed domesticity.
It's The Beatles going down fighting on a rooftop in central London January 1969 playing themselves out one last time with Get Back.
It's in the all-to-apt breathing rhythm and aching guitar solo of Savage - Annie and Dave's masterpiece.
And it's in the two seconds between the middle eight and the scatter-gun guitar solo where my Marshall Valvestate 8080 growls feedback in anticipation, a horse about to bolt, a future direction, an awesome power awaiting to be unleashed on 50 people in a Kennington pub as I kick off the best guitar solo I've ever played.
Fate was indeed at my elbow that night.
* Passion's puppet is, of course, a telling phrase from my go-to Roman Emperor and stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius.