Serious Request - or: So Deadly Contageous is Music.

There may come a time when the mist that surrounds us all may thicken around me, and thicken and thicken. I will first find my way without any problem. But gradually I will lose sight of this beautiful world I know so well - and I will lose how it smells, and how it tastes, and how it feels, and how it sounds. Or at least, that is how I will look to you.

I would appreciate it if by then, you would help me a bit. Nothing serious - I hope others will be able to do the serious stuff - but when you visit me, play me a tune, sing me a song, put on the radio.

Play me 'Go Leave' by Kate McGarrigle, because I love this voice (and that of her sister Anna, of course), and because she sings 'ears have a way of calling...'.


Play me 'Your Soul and Mine' by Gil Scott-Heron, because it captures the frightening cruelty of our world in the frightening beauty of our poetry and music.

Play me 'Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands' by Bob Dylan, because it shows that the world never ends because it can be captured in music - as long as you do it in 11 minutes and 18 seconds exactly, and Dylan found out.

Play me Dolly Parton's 'Travellin' Prayer' because it is about Love, and God, and Strings.

Play me the Allegretto from Beethoven 7, because it reminds me of eating home made apple pie on a winter morning in a small farm house with my best friends ever.

Play me 'Bells of Harlem' by Dave Rawling, because of its grace - Grace? -, and because I wanted to be him ever since I know him.

And in case you think I am a sentimental sod (which, indeed, I will be then, and actually I am already now):

Play me Goran Bregovic' 'Alcohol' so that I can look forward to a stiff drink and a wild party although those days have long gone, now and certainly then.

Play me Les Claypool's 'Wynona's Big Brown Beaver' as loud as possible, because of the slappin' on the bass, and because of the '...and a half' in the second verse and - oh come on, you know why ;-)

Play me The Beatles' 'Yer Blues', just for my sake and yer's.

And play me lots of music I do not know yet but you think you may do me a favour with. Because my talking may have stopped by then, and any other form of recognizable reaction, but inside I am sure my whole musical idioculture, built up in a life which by then will have stopped to be my biography, will still be available to make life meaningful and worthwhile till the end (although I am sorry to say you will never be sure; just trust me).

And then, when all has ended, carry on to play your tunes, not mine. And may I humbly predict that part of my tunes will turn out to have become your tunes?

So deadly contageous is music.

[This blog entry is the flip side of the entry called 'The Added Value of Music'. Up to you to decide which one is the A-Side.]