Rain check

Looking for Melanie Klein and castration on the internet, I came across the following gem from Hannah Segal:

“[…]. One was an extremely gifted professional violinist whom I interviewed on the ward. When I asked him why he stopped playing the violin he responded “do you expect me to masturbate in public?”

My world is relatively silent, I can’t stand much reality. I was unaware that I was enjoying so much peace and quiet, when I started looking for music to add here and suddenly there is so much of it, so many songs and albums that fall into the exceptionally important category. Like paving stones for skipping back and forwards over my life. My favourite songs at such and such a time. Albums I listened to over and over then forgot about. All I need to do is listen to a song to find myself projected back to that particular time, with its hopes and fears and loves and hates and atmosphere. Like Proust’s Madeleine, the reality of a city street on a rainy night surges forth from a chord change, a note, a word, a musical atmosphere.

I already mentioned Roy Orbison’s “It’s over” – that was my first heart ache. I don’t know who it is about, but I can remember sitting in the car with my family, the sun sparkling on the sea and thinking about not being loved by a boy at school. Not my first musical memory - I don’t know if they could ever be placed in chronological order – but my first memory of heartache in connection to boys.

In some cases, I don’t even have to hear the song again, today. I only have to remember it, remember the moment, as if the feeling was encrypted into the music and together they fly like a kite in my inner sky. The soundtrack to my sorest ever heartache, when I was dumped by my best friend - blonde pigtails, blue eyes and red cardigan - with no warning and no explanation, is Freddy and the Pacemakers singing “When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high, and don’t be afraid of the night. At the end of the storm there’s a golden sky and a keepsake forget-me-not”. I have a vision of myself walking across the play park at the bottom of my street in the dark, in the pouring rain, trying to clutch at those words, choking on them, crying my eyes out. My distress was safely hidden by the weather, the heavy rain (“Was it tears that fell or was it rain?” – my father’s favourite song) and the cold that stings your face and makes it red anyway, so no one will know that you want to die inside. That is not a good memory, and to this day I don’t like that song.