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For years, on my drives along motorways or down quiet country lanes to the schools where I worked, I listened to an endless mix of albums: classical, electronic, jazz, pop‑rock, new age, Spanish guitar, fado, Gregorian chant, afro‑house, alternative, and plenty of others that don’t sit neatly anywhere. I always chose whatever matched the mood of the moment: either the need for a bit of borrowed calm, or the urge to fill my head and chest with something lively enough to spark me into action, or reaction, all on its own.
Putting on Shout by Tears for Fears at seven in the morning, when you’re still shaking off sleep and the day joins you on the A7, rising out of the distant lines of the Marão, is something that stays with you. And the effect of Eleni Karaindrou’s Elegy of the Uprooting is just as hard to forget, especially when you catch a flock of pigeons circling above a stand of plane trees and poplars glowing with autumn colour (moving like a silver shoal). The memory of Massive Attack’s Teardrop lingers too, in that moment when the car’s sleepy rhythm carries you towards the contrails on the horizon, just as the sun catches them and they look like snails unhurriedly tracing a glassy trail.
One album stayed with me for months: Beyond the Missouri Sky, by Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden. His guitar and his bass were a steadying presence, a quiet sort of comfort during the morning queues and in those other moments when the road felt like it was taking me, on my own, somewhere beyond God. More than once I found myself writing in my head with that soundtrack behind me. And I never knew, or managed, to say thank you. Because music (like poetry) is something you listen to, love, and feel grateful for.
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