I like music

I like music that jitters and skips, that never quite starts and never quite stops, clever tangles of lyrics and angles. I like music that shimmers, smooth and artful, words folded into melodies, wrapped and ribboned like a gift.

I like big-hearted, haphazard music that gives you a bear hug until your ribs ache. I like music that goes so fast that it's out of breath, an exuberant dash from the start to the end. I like music that is grinning as it crosses the finish line.

I like music that makes me feel like I am in the video. I like music that makes me walk like someone else, makes me speed up, slow down. I like to be moved. I like music that stops at the right time, that doesn’t outstay its welcome. I like things that don’t outstay their welcome. I worry about outstaying my welcome.

I like music that takes me to places I’d never otherwise go. I like music that returns me to times a part of me wishes I’d never left. The walk down the river from my old flat, soundtracked by a genius with a ukulele. That drive back from Devon, one man, his jokes and his guitar filling the car.

I like music that reminds me of friends. I like music that reminds me of other evenings. I like remembering nights in Prague, in Lucerna Music Bar dancing like an idiot, or in the After Dark watching my friends do the same. I like a synthesiser, but only sometimes.

I like music made by people before my parents were born, the wheedling tone of a frantic clarinet, music from another time that makes me tap my feet. I like music that makes me tap my feet. I am not the kind of person to tap my feet.

I like music but I don’t like gigs. I like music to always be there, seeping from the background into the foreground and I’ll wear my headphones to take the bins out, or go to the shop at the top of the road. Ten minutes, three songs: it’s enough.

I like the music she makes when she sings at the top of her voice in the other room, not caring if anyone can hear, free and heartfelt and drowning out the radio, turning every pop star in the world into her backing vocalist.