Warmth saved me 💫

 

It’s a concept that bounced around in my mind for awhile: listening to some quite definite music gives to me a very subtle (at first) cosy and warm feeling…

A sense of empathy and communion with the artist and his music filtered and enriched of personal memories and experiences.

I’m just now enjoying (deeply enjoying, I mean) Joan Armatrading’s first record and, like other times, I’m into her music with a sense of belonging to a specific era and culture.

Joan’s strong and unique voice, the amazing musicians, the cool partying atmospheres and the memory when I first appreciated this music when living in London, poor like a church mouse, but happily discovering something new every day.

I don’t know why “this” music moves me differently than others… but that’s not the only disc to be gifted by warmth: Neil Young - Harvest reminds me when I met with my girlfriend at a park and I had the newly purchased record with me.

More?

When my mom suddenly passed, I remember I was playing in loop Edvard Grieg’s “The Death of Åse” from Peer Gynt and crying in tears, in the dark.

It was a solitary, soothing self-healing technique and I still am deeply moved when listening to this immortal music.

Could go on and on… Incredible String Band’s “U” double record-set also reminds me of a period when I studied and read a lot, stuck in my little room with my audio system for days… I was in my teens and dreaming eyes wide all day.

Popol Vuh’s “In Der Garten Pharaohs” was another of many seminal discs when a kid… I was listening to this almost every day that my mom was afraid for my health: at some point, she insisted I destroyed the cover and the vinyl disc in pieces (a truly sad and stressful moment)… a few days after the assassination of the orange disc, I bought another copy that I only listened when alone at home.

Joan Baez’s House of the Rising Sun in  “The Ballad Book” made me falling in love with acoustic guitar, which I bought when I was thirteen years old… and never quit.

The Pentangle’s “Reflections” which I bought in a long defunct bookstore in Padua (Draghi), changed my life and opened new worlds to a younger me… teaching that the best music wasn’t the one played on the radio, but something to be discovered in a personal endless searching and searching.

Many discs I own and cherish could tell a tale, a story… they aren’t material friends but immaterial part of my soul, my enlarged family.

Thanks to Joan Armatrading’s singing her “Save Me” in background, right now… very aptly, indeed ❤️

I love music, yes, I love it dearly.