In A Good Way

MARLBOROUGH ROAD MASSIVE

For those of you reading this that don't know me well enough by now, i have to make something very clear about myself, I love music. I love to listen to it, I love to play music and I love to share music. That's why I DJ, as an expression of that love and a deep wish to share the music that effects me, in what ever way it does so, with others.

For me, the Marlborough road 'happening', on the day of the royal wedding (in case you don't know!), was such a spontaneous and uplifting time of sharing such music, that i just cant stop thinking about or talking about it. For a few short hours on that Friday, whilst some people in other parts of the country where celebrating a fairly important marriage, I like to think that the overwhelming majority of the people on Marlborough Road where celebrating being a community of diverse people, from the very young to the young at heart, in the only way they know how. By singing, dancing, smiling, eating, drinking and being merry. All of this done with a strong sense of peace and solidarity.

However, the only sadness is that both the authorities and the media wish to paint it with a much darker brush. For them they saw it as broken glass and taser guns, where a member of Parliament laments the demise of 'normal' inhabitants, others as somewhere that was a scary place to be, and where if media photographers pick up on the cigarette end of a story, all they will get is pictures of rubbish. There is always going to be a bad element in all walks of life, and the Friday's celebration on Marlborough Road was no exception. No one will condone the action of the smallest of minorities taking upon themselves to inflict damage or harm to anybody or anything, and we all know the world we live in is far from perfect. But i feel it is totally unfair that the overwhelming majority of 'normal' people that flowed along the street that afternoon should be tarred with the same brush, for one day in how many years, or decades even, the people reclaimed the streets for nothing more political than a celebration of life.

For me , the day was a restoration in warm, creative, and above all positive anduplifting human spirit, where it was possible to enjoy a few hours in the sunshine being happy together. Lets hope that we don't have to wait for another royal wedding to have a chance to express ourselves in the same manner again.

DROWNING NOT WAVING

How is it this box I'm in is getting smaller?

How is it I'm in this box in the first place?


The air in here is dank,


The leaden light in here hurts my eyes,


The smell of piss and body odour is overpowering


How do I get out of this box, and in to the fresh air?


Does it take ME to break the seal?


Do I have to wait for help?


Is the box actually real?


Or is it of my own making?


All I know is I didn't plan to be here,


I don't want to be here any more,


I need brightness, colour, warmth,


To feel the sun on my face.

SOME OF DEM DEAF AND SOME OF DEM BLIND

Maybe it's the timing, maybe it's my frame of mind at the moment, maybe, like one's sense of smell or one's sense of taste, my sense of sound is actively inciting emotions and feelings upon me, suggesting a time and a place in my history, and in this case, inducing a stage of lament. A lament for the past, for my youth. With this sense of sound, which is so evident in music, my thoughts and reflections are rose-tinted for the good old days of my youth , in the seventies and eighties. After just over two months of being blog writingly barren, the motive for finally putting my fingers to the keyboard was, yet again, music. What a hold and an influence it must have on me, music is , and always has been, pervasive in my life. Shaping my moods, my internal atmosphere. There are times, very rarely, when i cannot listen to music at all. I feel those time are usually when i am so emotionally spent that music is just too invasive or painful to even hit the start button on the CD player, when only silence will do. But, at the moment, it is a softer option of that extreme, the sad lament for past, things lost and things never to return. But, then again, the more i think about it, the more i realise that not only music seems to reflect my moods at any given time, but can also influence them. How many times have you actively chosen a piece of music to change your mood? I know it must be thousands for me. And with instant access to music on the Internet, it's so easy just to play your fave tunes. I even stumblingly tried dj'ing and mixing with two windows of You Tube the other night, and it worked (sort of!), got the toes tapping anyway!

So, it appears that music is a two-way street, it can influence and much as we can influence our selves by the choice of music we listen to. Not exactly a Revelation, but i know what I'm going to do now, put myself under my own influence with the use of music, I'm going to revel in the energy, the excitement and the life and hope for the future, that we all drew upon from the music of our youth. So, with a middle-aged-bone-creaking rebel cry i will sing to you, 'go tell your friend, we come again, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, another one bite the dust, some of dem def and some of dem blind, some of dem satta and looking for a sign, Nothing never done before the time, time, time'. 8-)