Excerpts
Excerpts from Connections
Copyright © 2017 Jennifer Dixon
Chapter One: The Tracks
This is the beginning of the end that is the beginning. That’s just the way it was. “Nothing ever stays the same.” That’s what I was told when I was a child. Although it upset me at the time, I know now that I would not have survived had this not been the case. Back then, I thought you had to stick with the devil you knew. But we kept moving, things kept changing and there was a lot I did not understand. There were two of us at the start, two sides to the coin, and we were different in many respects, but we had the core where harmony blended us together. It was music that launched us on our esoteric adventures, and we never questioned its power. In fact, Maureen – though I usually called her Mau, would often communicate her feelings, and sharpen mine, simply by playing a song. For me and my sister, this was the bond that heightened our senses. It might have been ‘just music’ to everyone else, but it was a survival strategy for us. If we’d had no other means of communication, I know now that it would still have been enough.
Even before I understood this, however, I loved the medium to bits because it lit up and seemed to make sense of my everything. I only wondered if it was a bit weird to feel that way. In Mau’s case, the addiction was more intense, and she would play her tracks over and over. But I speak for both of us when I say that in all the music we loved, we found special meaning and a connection with the inside. I know this because I could read it in her eyes. She would flash me a look when a certain track came on and we both felt the same visceral squeeze. On the other hand, while music can bring me immeasurable joy, some tracks can also focus my deepest feelings on all manner of things past and twist my essence into knots. Music can be a roller-coaster ride in that respect. With one or two unforgivable exceptions, I have always been completely at its mercy…
Mau could cry easily, but it was a rare occurrence for me once I realised that my father regarded this as a weakness. So, despite my sister’s frequent encouragement for me to let my feelings out, I just couldn’t. I had been his last hope for a boy, so you could say that I was on a hiding to nothing from the moment I was born – it certainly felt that way most of the time. Since our father made it difficult for us to be ourselves in his company, or to develop selves we could be proud of, we each sought refuge in something else: some unexpressed truth. For survival, everyone needs an idea of home to feel safe. Mau and I found it in music.
Since my sister always seemed happy, I tried to emulate her. I laughed, danced, and sang along to Beatles and Dusty Springfield tracks and frequently got myself into trouble. It was okay for Mau to be the clown, but my father had decided that I shouldn’t, and he couldn’t stand to see me being frivolous. When I came home from school, at twelve years of age, with a report card that said I had ‘a keen sense of humour’ he hit the roof. “Where the hell is a keen sense of humour going to get you in life?” he said. I had to hide it after that.
… In the year I left Geordieland – which is in the north-east of England, I was nineteen. When I arrived in France, I was terrified. So, on my second day in Paris, I bought a radio/cassette player and two cassettes: ‘Songs of Leonard Cohen’ and ‘Georges Moustaki – Le Métèque.’ That blew all of my ‘settling-in’ allowance. These items were all I owned of value. I did not include myself in this list because I did not own myself at the time. It was the music that owned me, and I resonated in that connection.
… After nearly two years in France, I bought a guitar and moved to Munich where I serenaded myself in a tiny flat in Schwabing. Roberta Flack was having a big hit right then with a song that got right through to my essence: ‘Killing Me Softly.’ I also learned a few German songs during my year there. Music can make you go a bit crazy – if that stands for leaving yourself behind and not being the ‘you’ everybody thinks they know. But, at that time, I was largely unaware of this… I tried hard to identify with the Simon & Garfunkel song ‘I am a Rock’ to convince myself that I was strong, but it didn’t work. My sister was always concerned that I might be lonely – which, of course, I was. When I returned to the UK, feeling quite deflated, she cheered me up with a Carole King song: ‘You’ve Got A Friend,’ and she made me dance and sing along to a Sonny & Cher hit: ‘I Got You Babe.’
… I jumped at the chance to move to Italy about a year later, and there I began a much better life. On some Friday nights, I sang in an Irish pub. Sometimes I did this with a young Irish noviciate who had a great voice. I learned a few Italian songs, was smitten by artists like Gino Paoli, Lucio Battisti and Fabrizio de Andrè, and I began writing works of my own again. It was one of the most marvellous periods of my life and, within a few years – while working for the UN, I met a wonderful Australian man. Rome – ‘the Eternal City,’ with its splendid, chaotic, kaleidoscopic, octaves, has got to be the best place in the world to fall in love and, for a shy Anglo-Saxon like me, it felt gloriously liberating. I could hardly believe it, but my inner choir was frequently running ‘I’m a Believer’ through my mind and making me smile…
Not long afterwards, I followed my Australian to Nepal where we got married. At one of our wedding breakfasts (we had two!) we were certainly honoured when the famous ‘Boris of Kathmandu’ sat down at our table and regaled us with some of his stories… Boris was a very likeable man with a magnificent philosophy that sounded much like my sister’s: “There is only one thing that counts: it’s how many people you make happy.”
… Is the beginning more important than the end? I used to wonder. At the start, there was a great lack of comprehension on my part, and I felt powerless until I figured things out and moved on physically. On the emotional plane, however, this was not so easy. As for the end – that’s coming at you all along whether you like it or not. You are never in charge of the peculiar construct of time. It goes its own way, periodically disappears into itself, and gets you right in the deep places when you least expect it. I think Noel Harrison’s haunting song ‘The Windmills of Your Mind’ expresses this very well.