A very nostalgic and self-indulgent post coming up... Feel absolutely free to skip.

But hey, the new year is approaching. It's an introspective kind of time.

And hidden among all the reminiscing and looking forward is a more general reflection: On how influential and memory-awakening music can be.

Ten days before our departure, in the thick of the panicky preparations, Nigel did a little Facebook post called D minus 10, and accompanied it with a link to -- what better? -- I was born under a wandering star.

This one-off then grew into a series. And Nigel subsequently turned them into a playlist.

Many of the pieces have a lot of resonance for me.

D minus 9: Davy's on the road again

This was a song from Nigel's teens:

Davy's on the road again
Wearin' different clothes again

And yes, different clothes are part of travel...







D minus 8: Try everything

This is from Zootopia, one of my all-time favourite cartoon movies, and I confess to having often hummed its wonderful theme song in my less encouraged moments:

I won't give up, no I won't give in
'Til I reach the end and then I'll start again
No, I won't leave, I wanna try everything

This is an awesomely adventurous and inquisitive note on which to head into a journey -- or into the new year. (And who could resist those slinky tigers?)



D minus 7: On the road again

I swear I knew nothing of this song except for that classic first line. Maybe it was an advert somewhere once. But the lyrics are great:

On the road again
Goin' places that I've never been
Seein' things that I may never see again
And I can't wait to get on the road again



The lure of "places that I've never been" -- that is absolutely what it's all about.

And if you want a more complicated version, try this:

"There's something special about travel -- it somehow reinforces that innate scientific drive to understand the world around us. What is it about being in unfamiliar and exotic environments that sharpens the senses, heightens the instinct to want to know how the world works?"



D minus 6: The traveller

Baaba Maal was an accidental discovery. But there were two reasons for including this song. The first was its genesis and ethos:

"It was almost inevitable that Baaba Maal would one day call an album The Traveller because for the Senegalese veteran travel and music are inextricable. The singer and guitarist belongs to the semi-nomadic Fulani people. He first left his homeland of Fouta, in the river valley region of northern Senegal, almost 40 years ago, to perform music hundreds of miles away as a teenage boy scout and he has been a wanderer ever since. 'It's part of my culture,' he says. 'The songs travel from village to village, from country to country. It's something natural to my tribe and this part of Africa.'"

And more generally, it's in our genes to wander. Humans were migratory longer than they have been sedentary. And not only human beings. As the Prefectural Museum in Naha so pointedly asks: "Why do most forms of life travel?" (We're in Okinawa, by the way, hence the pictures top and bottom. More on that in a later post...)

The second reason Baaba Maal had to be part of the playlist was that there's something about it that reminds us of the Malian and Ghanaian music we used to love when we lived -- oh so briefly but so memorably -- in Africa.





D minus 5: Road to Santiago

This jiggy song by Oysterband enlivened many a European road trip.



And I've always wanted to traverse (by some means or other) the road to Santiago. Pretty much the furthest west we've been in Spain was Leon (where storks nested willy-nilly, and Puglet, our Peugeot, got impounded and had to be bailed out).



I used to work near Sherborne in Dorset, and sometimes at lunchtime I would visit the beautiful and venerable abbey that nestles in the heart of the town. I particularly loved the chapel with the statue of St James (aka Santiago) of Compostela, with his cloak, his bag, and his cockle shell hat.

I developed my own little meditative round: the Leweston tomb represented mortality (and its Elizabethan qualities brought back memories of childhood when my mother taught me to love old churches); St James spoke of pilgrimage; in the chapel at the end I would light my candle, the act embodying humility and trust; and then finally, I would let myself be dazzled by the stained glass, the coloured bosses, the exuberant carvings, and the golden glow of the main part of the abbey -- full of exultation and joy of life and celebration of creation.

Mortality, pilgrimage, presence, joy...





D minus 4: Anywhere is

I remember listening to this just before beginning a new job. It turned out to be a pivotal move, leading me in amazing new directions. But waiting in the wings for my debut, I didn't yet know that, and the future loomed large and scary. I was going to be giving up home for two chunks of the week, and giving up familiar and comfortable and interesting routines, and I couldn't see past this rupture to any possible good ahead.

Enya's song, at that point, made me feel more positive. Life is full of turnings; everywhere there's a new beginning. It's like a maze, but in many ways it doesn't matter which gap you go through -- because "anywhere is" what you make of it:

I walk the maze of moments
But everywhere I turn to
Begins a new beginning
But never finds a finish
I walk to the horizon
And there I find another
It all seems so surprising
And then I find that I know



D minus 3: Golden brown

This atypical Stranglers' offering was one I remember from BFBS, the British forces' radio station that I used to listen to during my year in Minden, Nordrhein Westfalen (in what was then West Germany). It was a tough bit of travel, that one (loved the experience, hated the job -- and it was not the last time I would meet that combo...) So the familiarity of the UK voices and the news from what was then home were very welcome. And in the midst of all that I picked up a lot of British pop music.

I didn't realize at the time that the lyrics of the (musically very complex) "Golden brown" are deliberately ambiguous (referring both to a lover and to heroin). But that makes them peculiarly apt, since travel is so undeniably addictive...

Every time, just like the last
On her ship tied to the mast
To distant lands, takes both my hands
Never a frown with golden brown

Being "tied to the mast" by his seamen was the choice of Odysseus, so that he could hear the voice of the sirens without ending up in their thrall. What siren voices do I need to escape in order to keep travelling...?

D minus 2: King of the road

As a kid, I was the proud owner of one of those little electronic organs with a two-octave keyboard and six pre-set chord buttons (later I graduated to three octaves and 12 chord buttons). This Roger Miller classic was in my first music book. At that point I found the rhythm a bit tricky and the words nonsensical. Now I love its cool sway and its hammering piano background, and have a lot of respect for its upbeat take on life:

Trailer for sale or rent, rooms to let fifty cents
No phone, no pool, no pets, I ain't got no cigarettes
Ah but, two hours of pushin' broom buys a
Eight by twelve four-bit room
I'm a man of means by no means, king of the road



D minus 1: The final countdown

The title speaks for itself. But it is also a reminder of the turn of the millennium, celebrated at a party with friends in New Zealand. We were heartily glad to see the back of 1999, which had been an extraordinarily trying year, and this song launched us all into a new period (which -- despite blips -- has really not been too bad for us).









D ZERO: Feeling good

I remember hearing this in a cafe in Yogya, before I'd really settled in and started to feel comfortable.



It brought an extraordinary mood lift. That was Michael Buble's version, but even better, I think, is an earlier version by Nina Simone.

It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good
I'm feeling good

So, with all appropriate humility and gratitude, and remembering the message of the Okinawan lion-dogs (grrr-ing off the bad spirits, holding tight to the good spirits), I go with hope into 2018.

DUM, de-DUM, de-DUM, de-DUM, feeling good...