WHERE DO I BEGIN?
"Where do I begin, to tell a story of how great a love can be?"
Those words, from one of the most memorable movies of my teenage years, Love Story, came drifting back to me recently.
Perhaps because, at this stage of my life, I find myself asking a slightly different question:
Where do I begin to tell the story of how great a life can be?
It is strange how the smallest memories from the distant past can suddenly awaken something inside an ancient heart. A song. A face. An old photograph. A melody that somehow survived the decades and comes knocking at the door of memory.
And suddenly, for a brief moment, you are there again.
Seven or eight years old, standing in front of the whole school at Francis Light Primary School, singing an Elvis Presley song—"It's Now or Never." Somehow, I won first place.
I don't remember everything about that day, but I remember the feeling.
Perhaps that was my first public encounter with the strange magic of music: the ability to take something that exists only inside you and send it out into the world.
Music has always been food for my soul.
Some of the songs that accompanied my growing-up years remain lodged somewhere deep inside me—"The Sound of Silence," "House of the Rising Sun," "Pussy Willows, Cattails and Roses" and so many others. I used to sing them wholeheartedly, without worrying whether I sounded particularly good.
These days I mostly listen.
Although every now and then, when nobody is around, I still let one loose in the shower.
Some traditions deserve to survive.
I have always said that Pink Floyd gives me a kind of psycho-emotional boost. Cat Stevens takes me somewhere else. Then there is jazz, classical music, folk music—and an entire universe of sounds that somehow became part of who I am.
For that, I have to thank my eldest brother.
When I was a teenager, he opened a door for me that I have never really closed. His collection of records introduced me to music far beyond the narrow world of my own experience.
I remember The Beatles and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Peter, Paul and Mary, Harry Belafonte, Trini Lopez, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole…
I drowned myself in those records.
Perhaps that is why I have always felt blessed by the circumstances of my life. Not because everything was easy. Far from it.
But somehow, along the way, life kept placing things in front of me—people, books, music, places, accidents, disasters, friendships, heartbreaks, journeys and inexplicable moments of grace.
And now, after all these years, I sometimes wonder whether I am running out of stories.
Perhaps I have told too many already.
Perhaps I have finally reached the point where I should simply bow, step back and let the curtain fall.
Let the fat lady sing.
But then I hear a song.
And there I am again.
A little boy in a primary school in Penang.
A teenager discovering a world inside his brother's record collection.
A young man wandering through life, collecting experiences as though they were sketches in a journal.
An old man sitting quietly, listening to Pink Floyd and wondering where all those years went.
And suddenly I realize something.
Perhaps I am not running out of stories at all.
Perhaps I am simply beginning to understand that the story was never really about the stories.
It was about the living.
The music.
The people who passed through.
The places that changed me.
The mistakes.
The miracles.
The sorrow.
The laughter.
The endless, sometimes ridiculous, search for peace and comfort in a world that continues to give us floods, volcanoes, wars and all the other evidence that humanity still has a long way to go.
And yet…
Here we are.
Still listening.
Still remembering.
Still searching.
Still singing, even if these days the audience is mostly the bathroom mirror.
So, where do I begin to tell the story of how great a life can be?
Perhaps I don't.
Perhaps I simply keep turning the pages.
One memory at a time.
One song at a time.
One day at a time.
And perhaps, after all, that is the story.
#LifeIsTheStory #MusicAndMemories #StillTurningPages #StillSinging
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