“That’s one of the great things about music. You can sing a song to 85,000 people and they’ll sing it back for 85,000 different reasons.” – Dave Grohl

Music is an enormously important thing to me, it can drag me out of the utter doldrums or can bring me crashing down into a bubbling mess with just a line or a verse. It can bring back vivid memories of a place, a time or a person and can often be a forever reminder of something incredibly special or incredibly painful. I’m not a snob when it comes to music and my tastes can range from the soaring overtures of Offenbach to the hallowed wordsmithery of Saint Kylie of the Minogue. If a stanza or a melody resonates with me it resonates, doesn’t matter a jot if it’s pop, classical, bluegrass or thrash metal I have big ears and an eclectic taste.

Recently I’ve been lost in a particular song and for the life of me couldn’t quite get why, it’s a catchy tune and sing-a-long-able but it’s only been the last few days I’ve understood why it’s suddenly one of my ‘moments’ and why it resonates.

Let me explain.

As I have mentioned I was on holiday with a group of friends and my better half to Benicassim (a massive music festival in Spain) and for reasons previously explained I decided not to attend the festival and just have the holiday. One of the friends I holidayed with is also a massive music fan, probably moreso than me. So massive she used to moonlight as a club DJ (accountant pants by day, DJ cans by night) and many many of my musical experiences have been shared with her. We’ve been lucky enough to see so many of my heroes in concert or gone to festivals together I’ve lost count; Pulp, Mumford and Sons, Beyonce, Tom Jones, T In the Park (wild), Rewind (mild) but our epitome will always and forever be Fleetwood Mac…Stevie Nicks…..I died a happy poof that night.

(Incidentally, For my 40th my partner got VIP Adele tickets for me, that trumps everything, sorry J!!).

Anyway, through this wonderful friendship music has become more and more of a communication and a basic need to the degree that music is something we all share with one another as a collective often messaging each another with a new track or a memory of an old one from party days of yore. While we were in Spain I heard a few new tunes on each of the group’s iPods and instantly liked one, immediately had to download it and then proceed to play it to utter death as I always do (cheers Murrin!!).

Fast forward a week or so and my partner and I had a few days off together so we headed away to his parents for a couple of days travelling hundreds of miles north and as usual we had an absolute ball, laughing, joking, talking and loving. I’d been having a few struggles with myself as I tend to do and was bottling things up making mountains out of completely nothing in my own head to the point that when I finally began to talk about what I was fearing and what I was struggling with it was literally word vomit. He listened as he always does, he reasoned as he always does and when I suggested that I felt I might need to go talk to someone he offered to come too and support me as he always does.

Immediately I knew three things.

Firstly I DID need to talk to someone; him. No one else, just him. I was able to explain that for the first time in almost three years I was beginning to be troubled by my old friend the red fug of anxiety. This was a regular occurrence when I was younger and I hadn’t seen any sign of it from the second my partner and I  had met. The idea of it’s return was terrifying me and I couldn’t understand why it was happening, why I was suddenly so scared and worried about things. The second realisation was that all of our usual bravado and jokes aside I knew that one day will marry that man, he is absolutely my everything. The third thing I realised was why I liked the song.

There is a lyric in it that goes:

“I never came to the beach or stood by the ocean
I never sat by the shore under the sun with my feet in the sand
But you brought me here and I’m happy that you did
‘Cause now I’m as free as birds catching the wind”

What I realised in that instant was I had never been so happy, so free from myself  and my past and the confines I’d let surround me as I was with this man. I’d never allowed myself to be so completely vulnerable and laid bare as I had with him and that was solely down to him, to the comfort he offers, to the safety he gives me and to the sheer and utter love he demonstrates for me all day, every day. He knows every insecurity, every flaw, crack and blemish and loves me for them, not in spite of them. Without him I am absolutely nothing but with him? With him I’m something.

With him I’m me!

Oh, and the song? Malibu by Miley Cyrus.

It’s no’ Sylvester though, is it J?