Music is…comparable to a field of flowers to your eyes, or sweet-and-spicy Indian pani puri to your tongue, or a tantalizing aroma to your nose: music is a sensory feast for your ears.
…completely unlike a field of flowers, tasty food, or an aroma (unless the smell of your mum’s cooking brings you to tears of joy – can’t say I’m completely unfamiliar with the feeling): music can reach through your preconceptions or mood, your carefully cultivated musical tastes or your veneer of composed calm, take a hold of your soul, and charm out of it emotions you did not know you possessed. This is because good music isn’t just pleasant sounds or clever words. It is someone’s joy or sorrow, gift-wrapped in sounds and words, the throbbing of someone’s heart delivered to you with a red bow on top.
I believe that...everyone wants someone to love them so much they’d be willing to die for them.
Let me tell you a story...My room in college was a haven of peace, calm, and perfectly normal activities, not including weird witchcraft rituals requiring the demise of certain slightly airheaded birds. You can imagine my surprise, upon entering it one day, to find a severed pigeon head on my armchair. Little pellets of grain (which one can only assume were the unfortunate bird’s last supper) were scattered liberally all over the floor. Further inspection revealed the deceased bird’s body underneath aforementioned armchair. What had happened? The pigeon had, of its own volition, flown through the window and tried to wear my ceiling fan as a necklace.
A few weeks after Exhibit A was ushered unceremoniously out of my room by a janitor with a dustpan, two other pigeons decided to build a nest in the vent above my bedroom door. This involved flying to and fro across my ceiling, adorning my sleeping frame with twigs, feathers, and other more choice gifts at unearthly hours of the morning. Unable to dissuade them, I decided to adopt these two pigeons, and named them Clive and Owen. (Clive Owen in Sin City is black and white except for his red high-top sneakers – no prizes for guessing which bumbling bird his look reminded me of!) Now, I warned them about the fan, and they cooed and bobbed their heads up and down as though they understood.
It's true, I used to talk to Clive and Owen, because it was study leave and everyone was feeling unsociable. Every now and then someone would wander into my room:
‘Who’re you talking to?’
‘Uhh, I was on the phone. I wasn’t talking to the pigeons. I haven’t named them or anything. Um.’
Obviously, I don’t speak pigeon very well, because it wasn’t long before Clive gave himself a concussion on the fan and zigzagged haphazardly out of the window, with Owen (Owenna?) close behind.
Pigeons. Really.
My album and EP...Songs of the Bride was a short album of really honest prayers put to music. I got married in India to my beloved, an Englishman, and we were supposed to come to England together. When my spouse visa was refused, we ended up spending months apart, right in the wake of our honeymoon! Waiting, waiting, day after day, I poured my heart out in prayer and song. I didn't think anyone would ever hear most of these songs, which means they're more honest than I might otherwise have had the courage to be.
Young and Free is an EP that draws on the inspiration of my long and rather tangled history with my now-husband and long-time friend, sketching out in melodies both light-hearted and poignant the trajectory of young love. I like to think it contains some of the most catchy, foot-tapping songs I’ve ever written, and a range of styles, from music hall to acoustic folk.
I'm currently working on another EP, The Micah Pact, which should be out in a month or two, and I've recorded a short preview video HERE. The Micah Pact is about justice, and about hope, courage and faith in the midst of difficulty.
If I could _________, I would....fix all the broken families in the world. Oh, and then go to Venice.
You should download my album (and EP) because....They’re a free gift from me to you! Go on, take them: 'music.tarynleiaprescott.com'.