Night time

There’s nothing quite as refreshing as driving through a town or city in the middle of night when most people are safely tucked in their beds. I was driving from the most northern suburb last night to a rather southern suburb when I realised how much I love it. If there were two other vehicles on the road, it is a lot. You can either drive as slow as you like and just absorb the quietness or you can race through town, skip the red lights and ignore the speeding warning – knowing full well that if someone else is doing this right now, you might just connect. It’s the adrenaline rush, isn’t it? The thought that you might get caught out. But ironically enough, every time I’ve raced through town in the middle of the night, I found another car trying to race me. If you have fuel in your veins instead of blood, you’ll fully understand the rush when pushing your car to its limits in streets where it is forbidden to drive so fast.
So the next time you find yourself in the streets during the early morning hours make sure to appreciate it – the best you can. And if a blue lightning passes you – you’ve already lost the race.

Music (2)

Yes, we’re still on music. Why does it happen that every other or so morning one will wake up with the most random song in one’s head?  And then that song will refuse to go away until a moment when you realise it’s just not there anymore. I mean, where do these songs come from? Sometimes it will be songs that you haven’t heard for in ages. You haven’t even thought about them. And then sometimes it will be a song that you heard in the supermarket two days ago while you very much concentrated on your too long shopping list and the woman blocking the way in front of you. How then can you first of all suddenly hear the song in your head and secondly – remember where you heard it?! The brain amuses me. My own probably the most.

And yes, I’m singing Major Tom today – all day long. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFks9A9TCF0

Music

Sometime during the week the most random song played on one of the computers at work and out of nowhere one of the girls in the office started singing along. I couldn’t believe it. How could she know this song that I’ve never heard?

It is then that I suddenly remembered that as a little girl I use to think that it is possible to know every single song in the world. This off course is well before I understood that there is music in every language. As I got older the realisation hit and I was rather disappointed that I would never know every song there is to know.

Even as a teen I closed all the windows and doors and put the volume at its maximum and just listened to my latest tape or cd. (At that stage it was all Celine Dion and I’m confident to say that I knew all her songs – even the French ones). I would listen to a song over and over again. I would enjoy every sound and tried to separate every instrument. I loved my music.

Varsity life came along and I sometimes still had my alone moments with music – most of them in the conservatory absorbing the sounds of soon to be professionals. I loved the piano concerts, the organist and his musical feet, the choir concerts and best of all the symphonies. For days to come I would live the dream of a musician.

And then adult life happened and music disappeared almost all together from my life. Yes, the radio is still doing its thing in my car and on my laptop, but I hardly register anymore. Every once in a while a song would get stuck, but will soon lose its meaning again. More often than not, I find that I prefer silence. That silence that penetrates heart, soul and mind. It is this silence that rejuvenates me, where I find myself wondering and thinking again. It’s a Godly silence I can only find when I’m in the middle of nowhere among endless sand dunes or bushes filled with forest wonders. This is now my music.

And yet, as I drove to work this morning I could not help but put the volume at its maximum and sing like a mad woman along with Nianell’s “What’s the matter?” http://nianell.co.za/site/ And suddenly I felt human again.