As a general rule my New Zealand life and my Scottish life manage to separate themselves in my brain emotionally. I am frequently asked (usually in the UK) where I would wish to settle if I had to make a choice. That's a question I always avoid answering.
After The News this evening I happened to notice that The Phantom of The Opera was on the box and decided to put it on whilst I was finishing organising the Study (which I've been doing all afternoon) and writing my Thankful Thursday post. Wow. I hadn't allowed for what happened after I'd been listening (and partly watching) it for a short while.
I occasionally have the DVD on in the evening when I'm alone in The Cottage - my New Zealand home. My brain has obviously indellibly associated it with my New Zealand life. Suddenly I was an alien in my own land. I looked out over a familiar and loved land and seascape and experienced another life: a life from which I am, at this moment, detached. It's an experience I will never be able to explain adequately but it is undoubtedly one of the most emotionally harrowing experiences I've had.
I suppose it's not one helped by the fact that the music and words of the work are also so emotionally charged.
Phew.
The power of music. Even if I don't have your experience of "two lives" there are some songs or albums etc which do have a tendency to make me "travel in time" and remind of certain places and situations...
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