Swing The Mood

It is commonly accepted that the universal answer to 'What kind of music do you like?' is 'A bit of everything.', swiftly followed by an immediate self-contradiction along the lines of 'Mainly rock actually, I don't like hip-hop, or dance music. Or techno.'. Every so often, however, your curiosity will be rewarded with a simple yet mind-numbingly depressing 'I don't listen to music.'.

I do not understand this.

At the risk of sending the entire universe into a deep slumber with this flattest of platitudes, I hereby boldly declare that music is a source of immense power that can instantly inspire intense, sublime or harrowing waves of emotion. It can invigorate, amuse, energise or motivate. It can bring closer a loved one far overseas or swell the heart with the memory of a childhood moment. But it is also a two-edged sword. For every intimate and precious moment that can be revisited at will, there is also a reminder of pain gone but not forgotten, of extreme sorrow and grief. Music shapes a moment, defines a memory, twists a mood.

Take this morning, for example. A minor conflict was raging inside my head as I sat in my seat, my very own seat in the same carriage of the same train that I catch every single dreary day of every single dreary week. As I drifted in and out of the subconscious plane known and inhabited only by commuters, I sensed that the mood power struggle within me was drifting ominously in favour of an all-day stinker, and this on a Friday! Putting it down to the soul-destroying rainbow of greys filling this most British of skies, I somberly resigned myself to spending the day in the doldrums of drudgery.

Somewhere between Twickenham and Strawberry Hill, however, my little universe was picked up and shaken into the frenzied action of a demented snowglobe tumbling down a Swiss mountain. A blizzard of joy had entered my body and manifested itself through near-imperceptible motion in my left hand. Index finger up, middle finger down, index finger up, middle finger down. A remarkable feat of dexterity for a man without a musical bone, muscle or ligament in his body. This bold digital activity was even being mirrored by my equally talentless right foot. Tap tap taperoo. In the space of thirty short seconds, the existential funk that was threatening to engulf me for the day had surrendered faster than the entire French army facing a troupe of Albanian goat-herders at the gates of Paris.

As realisation slowly dawned on me, I looked down at the source of this miraculous change of fortune. I am certain that my iPod winked at me as I saw the name of the track that had surreptitiously invaded my mind and violently battered the burgeoning black mood into bleak submission.

I play the song again and the day is safe.