December 24, 1999

Whenever it rains like it has today, it takes me back.

I had finished work for the day, and my grandparents had gone to visit my dad all the way up in Wick, for Christmas. I had a key, so I went for dinner at their place.

I had a few cassettes at their place, and just for something to listen to, I stuck on the soundtrack to the eighties movie, Crossroads – average film; great music – while I sat by the living room window, watching the rain come down in thick sheets. The light from the streetlamps made the tarmac sparkle. It was a beautiful postcard of twilight tranquility, but in the quiet, listening to those melancholy blues was one of the most unsettling experiences of my life.

Back then I had nothing to be sad about. I was twenty-three; I had lots of great friends; and the great love of my life was still a few years off… but for the thirty-seven minutes that I sat there, staring through the glass onto the quiet rain-washed street, I wasn’t that young man. I felt all of life’s challenges and I touched all the heartache still to come. It was there, sitting on my chest and weighing me down, as each song connected with the turbulence of the weather outside in a way I had never experienced before and have not done since. It was as if the music had been written for that night, and that moment.

It is the only time music has made me cry.

I loved that soundtrack, but I have not listened to it since.