Why a whole issue about music?

Because in a world gone crazy, with everything that once felt like a sure thing now up for grabs, there is still music.

There is still, and will always be, a place where our sensual selves reside. Where we can be wild and free, soft and connected, broken and remade. A place of beauty and poetry and longing. A place of memory, history and hope.

Music is about our spark. The magnificence of us.

Music returns us to ourselves, shows us who we can be. Music is the ultimate regulator. A way to remind ourselves of our humanity and the humanity of others.

Music is beyond language, beyond the mind, beyond thought.

Music is our heart beating, our soul crying, our longing and our hope. Music reminds us to FEEL.

Because it matters.
It reminds us to breathe. Because it matters.

Music holds our memories: of first kiss, first heartbreak, first loss, first love, of home and hearth and joy and brokenness.

Through music we share everything.

When music is real, written and played from a deep place or a fun place, a moving place within us, we can remember to let go and hold on.

As Melbourne has gone into its one hundredth lockdown and the ground beneath us becomes more groundy and less all at the same time, as we re-write our way forward, a thousand doors explode open with possibility and tragedy.

We need music along the way – to mourn, to celebrate, to beg the gods for forgiveness, to say sorry, to bless our children, to forgive ourselves.

Music and musicians are our keepers, our soul sweepers.

It is one of the unerasable places where the sound of us, long into the future, is remembered.

When one day, aliens arrive, and maybe there are none of us left, there will be the music.

I hope they find some excellent jazz collection, maybe a folk album or two, a little bit of rock and a hell of a lot of soul.

In our house we argue about eras – which one was the best. Who sang it best. Elton John or Billy Joel, John Coltrane or Nina Simone, Muddy Waters or Duke Ellington, The Beatles or Donny Hathaway.

These last few weeks, as war raged on the ground and on the Internet, it was music that reached across to find me and still my beating heart.

I wish for all of you, our beloved readers, whoever you may be, that music returns any lost piece of you to yourself. That you dig up those old records, sync up to those dusty speakers and dance in your homes, without a mask or a care.

Because the truth is, I love us. I wish us all to be free.
To be safe,
To be happy,

To be found again.

Listen to music you love, music your loved ones love, music you’ve forgotten you love, music your neighbour loves, music from another country, another culture, other dreamers far away and maybe even from long ago.

Right now, as broken hearted as I feel about the state of the world, and our divisions and decisions, it is music that gives me hope. Music gives us back our history and our future.

What was human consciousness before it attached meaning-making to materialism? Before the pyramids and the skyscrapers? Before it all?

Maybe there was music.

I like to imagine that is true.

It’s ancient in us – we sing our way back to ourselves.

I wish you all a break from the news and a whiskey and a bit of vinyl.

Berry xox