Music always sounds so much better when you're drunk. The beats hit you harder, the melodies cut into you, the whole vibe penetrates you and obsesses you. Lyrics that seem trite when you're sober are truths, great important truths. You laugh, you think, you empathise. You get it.
I'm drunk right now, listening to music. This album I bought and didn't really listen to. I played it once and didn't get it. I was doing something else and it played in the background and I didn't really register it. Now, though, it sounds like the most amazing music ever. It's the good stuff - hooky, rhythmic, lively. I was feeling kind of down before I put it on. I'd been out, confronting my life, realising that I'm not where I want to be, or with who I want to be with. You know, sometimes you feel like your life, it's fine, but not the one you'd have picked if all possible lives were laid out before you and you got to choose.
Anyway, dull. Music. There's a violin just come in. A sort of jazzy vocal. Nice, as they say. Hot evening. Sweaty. Been a bit of rain, but the air's still really heavy, humid, dense. Stinkin' summer, oppressing the city. London's not built for heat.
Despite the heat, I kind of wish I was out dancing. I don't dance enough these days. I used to dance every week, several times some weeks. Now, almost never. Getting old. I was never a good dancer. Just an enthusiast. Dancing tonight, I'd get all sweaty and stinky, need a shower when I got back in. That'd be OK, though. There's a kind of liberating thing, giving yourself up to music and movement. Just living for your senses, your own body, your own perceptions. Joy. Not worrying about anything bigger - money, careers, houses, love. Just moving, smiling as the tune flips over to something else you recognise and know how to move to. Or something you don't know, something with an insistent beat, something you hear and get and fall in love with, sway to. That's a great little feeling. One of the best.