Memories evoked by music are a bit like dreams sometimes…

You can feel the emotion, there is no avoiding that. That is the thing that hits you over the head, blind sides you and stops you in your tracks. Christ yeah…I forgot about that song…I forgot about that. As well as the emotion there is something visual there, something tapping at the corners of your mind, something stealing into your vision, a bright flash that fades again just as quickly as it came. Like a dream you try to hold onto it, try to hold it still for examination but the more you try to see it and explain it, the more elusive and teasing it becomes. It’s like it does not really want to be caught or defined.

It’s all you can do not to cry, or just sigh. It’s fleeting, like everything in life, here one minute and gone the next, just like the moment itself, when it happened all those years ago. I don’t want to keep getting older and forgetting all of these things.

Money Mark singing Tomorrow Will Be Like Today. That was a new CD you bought over, and it was a small garden, enclosed by tall panel fences. The smell of yesterdays barbeque lingering in the air with cut grass. My knees pulled up onto the plastic garden chair. A crack in one leg playing on my mind. Too Like You. Hand In My Head. Makes me smile and think of you.

Did I become more like you, or did you become more like me?

I used to be the negative one, the worrier, the anti-social, and you used to be the smiler. Sandy haired and loose limbed, you used to say it all of the time; don’t worry. Don’t worry. Don’t ever worry about anything.

But that is not you now. Now I am the one who encourages you to see the light and to smile. Now I am the one who says don’t worry, and you are the one reluctant to go out there and deal with people and time and life.

You rubbed off on me. That was the way it happened. From moments like that, always with a new album playing in the background. So much of our story has a soundtrack. That’s why it happens like that when I hear a song, when it takes me back. Bang and I am young again. Not sat in the car staring solemnly at the rain on the window while you nip into the shop to buy some bread and milk.

How easily we grew up. It’s not really fair the way it happens like that. It takes you by surprise, because you are never paying attention as the years creep up. Then suddenly a decade has passed, and then another. It’s sometimes like we are still back there, existing back in time. We are two lots of people. Them and us. Then and now.

I am too like you now because you got inside my head.

You say that tomorrow will be like today and I say that sometimes you are wrong. I can’t remember what happened to that day. How did it end? Where did we go? What did we talk about and laugh about? I can just remember the feel of the plastic chair under me and the wobble, the give, from the crack in the leg. I can just remember the music, and that it was summer. I can see your face and the way you always smiled about everything and I can see you walking in with CD’s in your hand. I miss us.