Set Adrift on Memory Bliss

I stumbled across an alternative hip hop collection on i-Tunes today, and P.M.Dawn's Set Adrift on Memory Bliss was one of the songs listed. I immediately downloaded it [along with Pendergrass' Love T.K.O. I might add. For the young'uns, the intro riff from this was sampled by Ahmad for Back in Tha Day].

Listening to it, I am always amazed at how viscerally our memories can be connected to our senses. Music in particular, is like this for me. When I hear Set Adrift..., I'll tell you what happens.

I am 20 again, standing on Jamaica Street in Glasgow with my walkman on. Set Adrift...is playing and it's a late afternoon in high summer. I'm just outside a bakery waiting for the red doubledecker bus that will take me back to my Granny's place in Possil Park. I can smell diesel combined with the light sweet tinge of icing sugar from the bakery. I'm tempted to buy something, but I've already got a carton of toffee from Thornton's, which is my Granny's favourite. I always make sure I pick some up for her, because I think she doesn't have, nor has ever had, a lot of luxuries and I like to treat her to something special, however minor it may be. I also do this because she has always made me feel so very special. I've been spending the summer in Glasgow, with the original plan to do some theatre work with a friend of my father's, Rory, who teaches tech theatre at the Royal Scottish Academy. That gets sidetracked by a vicious two week sinus infection, which [to date] will be as sick as I ever get in my life. But I recover well enough to spend tons of time with my Granny, and to have a glorious summer in Glasgow with many visits to the Edinburgh Festival for good measure. I'm an adult, who still has the luxury of being a kid. I've got my whole life ahead of me and I've never been happier.

The happiness of this memory is tempered with what I have felt for many years, which is that I don't have my whole life ahead of me anymore and that I'm being devoured by my dreams, dreams that rage inside a body that is catching up from feeling like it didn't sleep for 10 years, that rage at the relentlessness of time, that rage period, screaming at me to do something, anything..

So I've decided another set list is in order. With the help of my CD collection and i-Tunes I'm going to compile what I refer to as the Lion's Den Mix. I'm going to listen to Set Adrift, and every other song that ever gave me that feeling on Jamaica Street, that obscure and all too fleeting moment of happiness and hope. I want to go back and search for myself and what I was all about in those moments. There is something in all this emotional churning I'm encountering right now, something that I am fearing. I need to find out what it is and deal with it.