The power of the Polka..dot.

Okay, so today’s daily doubt is not so much a doubt, as a wonder.  I know, it’s hard to believe, but I may be actually turning a corner!

As I write this, I’m watching (okay- half-watching) a movie in which Debussy’s Clare de Lune is playing in the background. It seems very poignant for a number of reasons and it has been one of my favourite pieces for a long time; for not only have I marvelled at David Oistrach’s fingers, my lovely friends played it at our wedding and it always reminds me of the power of music.

Recently I’ve had quite a few moments where I’ve thought of something and it suddenly appears again, in a surprisingly specific way. It sounds like I’m claiming to be psychic, but I’m sure everyone has experienced this. Just as an example; after I was writing about Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot, the movie was on that afternoon. Very weird…

Agatha also noticed this bizarre anomaly when she said that “one of the oddest things in life, as we all know, is the way that when you have heard a thing mentioned, within twenty-four hours you nearly always come across it again”.

So true and that's what I’ve marvelled about the music community; in that somehow there are connections everywhere that sometimes we don’t even know we’ve made. Maybe it's a bit like the Hokey Pokey? You put one foot in and one foot out, but when you put it back in and shake it all about; the universe gets stirred up too. A bit like hokey pokey ice-cream, with all the yummy crunchy bits.

Agatha also enjoyed music. She played the piano and, she did the Hokey Pokey. Oh sorry, what was that? Whoops, 'The Heel and Toe Polka'. No? Oh, just the Polka. Okay then. I guess the 'The Heel and Toe Polka' is just firmly pressed in my memory from childhood school dances—along with sweaty boys' hands and a pervading pre-pubescent pong of perspiration. Pew!

But why do we play music and dance? Well Levintin says that "Music is unusual among all human activities for both its ubiquity and antiquity. No known human culture now or anytime in the past has lacked music." It is present for the every day as well as the extraordinary and there is something about it, like Kermit the Frog says, that we want to share. Likewise, he says that "dance is not just a raging sea of unrelated bodily movements" but gestures that are unified and complete. He obviously has never seen my interpretive dancing.

So perhaps it's a little like ESPN. Pardon? Oh, of course, I mean ESP; a sixth sense that we don't quite understand but we can't live without. Isn't it also nice to think there's something out there connecting all these dots?

Levitin, Daniel (2007)This is Your Brain on Music: Understanding a Human Obsession Plume/Penguin.

Agatha Bellsy Agatha Christie (in the middle).