Glitch Log #20: Magnetic Musical Moments

In which a memory pulls in a song, then a person and then…

I used to live in Falmouth, Cornwall. I did my degree at Falmouth College of Arts so I lived there for three years. Whilst I was there I developed a relationship with the Evans family who were my nextdoor neighbours. Mr Evans, a local hotelier, was a great supporter of me and my gifting as a singer. His son Nathan was my friend, and a drummer – we were breifly in a band together. Unfortunately during my time in Falmouth Mr Evans died suddenly, shortly after a visit by the then Prime Minister to Mr Evan’s hotel. I was asked to sing at his funeral. The song that I sang was a duet, ‘Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me’ by Elton John and George Michael. I sang it with a friend of mine to honour Mr Evans at the funeral in Emanuel Baptist Church.

25 years or so later I drove past the church on my way to visit Falmouth one day when we were holidaying in Cornwall. The first thing that popped into my mind as I drove past the church was the memory of the funeral and this song. I reminisced as I drove into town, and Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me got stuck in my mind, because you know – songs become earworms. This earworm was in my mind while we parked and walked into town. We were just going to spend a touristy day walking around the shops and seeing the old familiar sights. We started at the south-west end of town, walking up the street going in the gift shops and I think probably we’ve only been in a couple of shops and galleries, when I suddenly noticed the music in one of them. They had the radio on and the song that was playing was Don’t Let Sun Go Down On Me by George Michael and Elton John. I thought ‘I can’t believe it!’

Well, I can believe it because that’s the nature of this glitch log! It’s like I am a radio antenna and my thoughts and emotions emit a signal and it pulls the thing that I was thinking of in and it plays it on the nearest device. Sometimes it’s a video screen, sometimes a TV show, sometimes a DJ set. The nearest device that day was the radio in the shop. Just think of the probability of that, think about the probability that of all the songs in all the world (somewhere in the hundreds of millions) that could possibly play within 10 or 15 minutes of me remembering the funeral, the radio plays that song. It’s not even a recent song, its decades old. Yes it’s a popular song but it’s a now a really old song, it is not one for regular radio play at the moment. How weird is that?! It struck me as a strong enough coincidence that I pointed it out to my partner, and I remembered it long enough that it eventually made its way into this glitch log.

To add to the glitchiness of this log, Nathan contacted me the other day out of the blue, inspired by something else I had posted online, and suggested that we meet up – for the first time since the funeral twenty 26 years ago! (I hadn’t even published this post yet, it was still waiting in drafts!)

So we did meet up. I hadn’t yet told Nathan I was writing this post but we got to chatting and it turned out that the day before our catch up was the anniversary of Mr Evans death. Hows that for weird timing?

And then, in other awesome news, within a week of our catch up we had formed a new band! I am so excited about that!

It’s sooooo cool that what you turn your consciousness toward manifests in reality! As I mulled over this memory and wrote about it, my friend came back into my life, with memories, music and all! I am blown away 🙂

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Love,