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Saturday, September 09, 2017

Music And Memories

Tonight my mother and I went out to dinner in a local restaurant, something we do most weeks, though not always the same place.

This time, there was music in the background. I don't much care for restaurants with music; I like to eat in peace and have conversations with my eating companion. But this time the music was the Beachboys and suddenly I was taken back to my teens.

My friend Denise and I used to go to St Kilda beach every summer, and Denise would bring with her two things: a transistor radio(yes, that's how long ago it was!) and reading matter. Quite often the music coming from the transistor was that of the Beachboys. My strongest memory is of "Good Vibrations".

And along with that are the books and magazines she shared with me. Denise and her family owned a boarding house, where boarders came and went. Sometimes they left soft drink bottles, for which, in those days, you got a deposit, which we used to buy comics and ice cream. That was, of course, in our primary school years, and I loved it, because my mother wouldn't let me have comics at home.

But by my teens, we were reading other stuff. Sometimes the boarders left books and magazines - speculative fiction books, SF magazines. Denise would read aloud so I could share them. I discovered Robert Bloch in the magazines. I can't even remember the titles of those short stories, but I do remember the stories themselves, and mentioning this to Mr Bloch years later, when he was in Melbourne for a convention. There was a story, for example, in which an old movie extra, who had lost a girlfriend during the silent era, kept seeing her in films she had never been in, seeing her wave at him, and received a note from her from the other side, explaining what was happening. He was telling someone else about it, then died himself - and turned up in the movie Intolerance, with his girlfriend, waving at the narrator. We shared that story on the beach.

And I encountered my first Robert Heinlein book. One summer, Denise got a copy of Stranger In A Strange Land, left behind by a boarder, and read it to me by the sea... I did eventually borrow it and read it fully, but my first memory of it is in the heat of summer, sitting on a beach towel with my friend, in between swims...

Who would have thought that a couple of Beachboys songs would bring back book memories?

4 comments:

Sue Purkiss said...

I remember Good Vibrations playing as a background to doing art at school. I was at a traditional grammar school - but the art room was a little enclave of anarchy!

Sue Bursztynski said...

Oddly, I, too, have musical art room memories. Our poor teacher was very sick and was absent from school for four weeks during my final year at school, so we were left to get on with our painting, and one girl, a passionate ballet lover, brought classical music, especially ballet music, to play while we worked! You may be starting to see why the school was happy to let us work without supervision... ;-)

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Hi Sue - gosh I don't have memories such as these ... mind you I'm older - also my mind is more open now to films, movies, books etc - at that stage I was sports mad ... but love the idea that art and music spawned anarchy - can see it though - cheers Hilary

Sue Bursztynski said...

Hi Hilary! I bet there is some sound or smell or image that brings back days on the sports field for you...