By a happy accident, I was reminded recently of Jeff Wayne's iconic War of the Worlds album, and realised with some amusement that it had probably been something like twenty years since I'd heard it in its entirety.  So I bought it, and refreshed my memory.  Wonderful - I was back in the workshop at the Queen's in 1980, building scenery.  A nostalgic sniffle, as is my wont.  Lovely.

Then I tried to remember some of the other music we used to play at the time, while putting together the set for The Last Enemy...  Oh yes, that's right, there was a copy of Best of Vangelis - so I grabbed a copy of that from the iTunes store...  and got a shock.

"To The Unknown Man"
I don't think I've ever played a piece of music that's proved quite so evocative of such a specific moment in my life.  I was transported back 28 years, probably the last time I heard it. I could smell the size boiling in its bucket, the sawdust, the latex glue, the disinfectant in the loo.  I could taste the lunchtime sandwich from the Queen's café bar.
I was just 20. I was inhabiting a whole new wonderful world I'd never imagined I could be a part of. I had friends, I had purpose.
I was in love. I had my whole life before me in all its glittering possibilities.

All those wonderful, naive, hopeful, wide-eyed possibilities.  Such a long time ago. So thoroughly forgotten.

I carry some fairly bulky baggage.  No surprise, that, everybody does; but I had no idea I was still carrying anything so old, so utterly unresolved, still so raw after all this time.  I'd just put it all away in a drawer in some dusty room in my head, and simply stopped going there.  Today, all unsuspecting, I peeked inside, and quite literally collapsed under the flood of old emotions that came pouring out.  I thought, in my foolishness, that I'd dealt with all that - I could comfortably talk about it, examine what I thought I felt about those years, convince myself that my cynicism was all that was left of such thoughts.  Confronted unexpectedly with a glimpse of the actual feelings and experiences of the time however, it's clear quite what monstrous arrogance that attitude was.

Cathartic, I guess.  I'll keep it on loop until the shaking stops.