Travelling by night...

What makes a great song?

Is it harmonious and glorious?

Does it have a special something?

Or are these songs immediate and powerful because they have grown on us? For me I can be stirred by music on a first listen - by its tune, its oddness or a certain quality that makes it new to me. However the music that I remember, that defines entire stretches of time for me and conjures images of my past will always be the music that I have rinsed myself in. The immersion method of music annoys those around me; it must be genuinely vexing to listen to the same song for the 20th time that day through a thin partition wall, so I can hardly be sanctimonious.

Yet... maybe this approach has served me in good stead. For as a way of prolonging the past and stretching it beyond snapshot of memory I have been lucky to hold on to some unusual memories that the mind should normally scour. The song below has deep memories for me of bus journeys through southeast Asia where the lights haloing past the cheap-curtained plastic windows carried on for hundreds of kilometres. The rough comfort of the seating and the reassuring ache of neck pain which had subsided from a knife like intensity some hours previous. The minute, polite sounds of the sleeping passengers echoing through the sticky heat of the interior. That tinge of sadness that this would come to an end soon flavoured with the knowledge that riding on a bus for 12 hours isn't actually that enjoyable until you have arrived at your destination. Certainty is guaranteed for a few hours at least, those ticking measures of the clock seem to be with you as a silent companion who offers no reassurance but has no need to.

This song seems to encapsulate all that melancholy for me, as if my experience of Thailand could be diluted into 4 minutes of dischordant aussie pop. For me Phantom Limb is a great song for it allows me to have total recall of something that defines my experience travelling, just existing.

It also made me remember the constant battle between dehydration and pacing yourself between toilet stops. Caught short indeed.