And the way one of life’s simple and remarkable pleasures dear reader is our capacity to be transported back in time - across oceans of space – back to the special moments of our lives.
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In an instant, the neural pathways fling open, years and rivers rush by in a blink and we can be there again – eating eel beside the Kombi at the Upper Allyn, savouring a sugar-coated apple slice on High Street in 1974, or slurping on a Sunny Boy in a rotunda at the baths in 1976 ...
And the impetus for some mental time-travel can come from a variety of sources: a photo, a painting, a vision, a smell, a taste, a song, a feeling …
I got to thinking about this again recently as I watched a documentary on opera legend, Dame Joan Sutherland. The program recounted how, after her retirement from singing, Dame Joan settled into a quiet life at her Swiss Chalet, high above Lake Geneva, Switzerland.
There on the screen before me were those magnificent snow-capped mountains, deep green valleys dotted with cows and cottages – tranquillity personified. And to my mind immediately sprang, not Carmen, not Beatrice di Tenda or La fille du regiment, but of course, hmm, ACDC.
Let me explain ...
You see, some years and many river tides ago, I was fortunate enough to be in Switzerland, to see those same hills, those pristine lakes, that beautiful and phantasmagorical section of earth – and the kind Argentinean man whose car carried us through those sweet alps, had such a deep and unshakable love of said Aussie rockers, that during our perambulations, he played all their CDs, non-stop.
So, naturally, it was ‘Hells Bells’ that I heard as Dame Joan’s not-too-shabby mountain nook appeared on the screen. And it was, I’m afraid to say, ‘You Shook me all Night Long’ which was fixed in my brain as I watched ‘La Stupenda’ tackle some needlework in front of the fire. And ergo, the potency of music as an agent for the access of memory, and so it goes.
And it goes for other music too: Chicago, the gurus of easy listening, unfailingly transport me to holiday-time Nelson Bay. Led Zeppelin take me to a brooding and saturnine sky over Morna Point.
Public Enemy lift me over the blue Pacific to a particular basketball court in Northern California – and when Peter Sarsted sings, ‘I’ll buy you one more frozen orange juice’, I’m always, always seven years old and with my beautiful mum again ...
It’s so amazing this time-travelling – even this week’s decision by the Pope to give Mother Teresa the nod for Saint-hood, allowed me to go back to Rome: back again to the August heat of that stupendous city, back to my steaming hot Pensione, to my slyly and irrevocably developing kidney-stone - not all memories are comfortable: discuss.
And the prompts for a flight across the ravines of our minds are all around us dear reader; a song, a sign, a gentle walk through Horseshoe Bend, a ride across the fields - and we can go back to them all, back to the faces, and feel it once more ...
And so it goes.
Goodnight.
