Together on the same page (of music)

Music means a great deal to me and has been in my life for as long as I can remember; I started playing the piano at the age of four and half, played the trumpet, a little bass guitar and was in a jazz band for a few years. I listen to all sorts of music from Five Finger Death Punch to Keith Urban, classical to country and just about everything in between. If my ears like it and it touches me in some way then it's on the play list and there's rarely a moment when I don't have music playing.

I wrote a little while ago about learning to play a piece on the piano, My Immortal by Evanesance, to play to my wife on our wedding anniversary which is coming along nicely. You can google the track if you like or follow this link to it. It's a pretty complex piece but is emotive and says what I want to say. I think that's one of the things I love about music so much; That it can say what I feel even though I can't put those feelings into words.

I've been married for a long time and my wife and I are pretty close. We're not one of those couples who grew apart over time and stay together only for lack of other options or for convenience sake. We are in love and are not at all embarrassed to say and show it. Like most people we've had good and bad times but overall our marriage of 25 years (in October this year) and relationship of 31 years overall has been a good one. We're asked sometimes what our secret is and to be honest we typically have no real answer, not one that satisfies the asker. Honesty, give and take, respect, passion, humour, acceptance, good communication, cuddling, similar interests, individual interests, allowing each other space, support...So many things and no one real standout thing as the key to it all.

We do the date night thing sometimes, we have left notes in work-lunches made the night before, bought flowers, (never on Valentines day though. What a shit-commercial-asshole day that is!), surprise gifts, picnics, nights at the fair, romantic dinners, text messages...You name it we've done it and none of it ever went up to Facebook to show how in love and amazing our relationship and lives were. That shit is as fake as tits on a bull. We just did it for each other.

One of the things we started doing a few years ago was combine our passion for music, and each other, into a thing; A ritual of sorts. Now, you may think it's dumb, and if you do that's ok, I don't really give a shit; I'm going to write about it anyway. So here's what we do...

Once each month we find a piece of music, any sort of music, and send it to the other's phone with no note or words...Just the track, or youtube video link. That's it. Pretty simple huh? We've been doing it for a while and it's been a really cool way to express our feelings at that moment or over the last month. Now, me being me, some of the tracks I have sent are not quite the traditional late-night-love-songs you'd expect, and neither are hers always either...No Kenny G saxophone songs, and no Julio Iglesias...Although I have sent some Enrique Iglesias, I'll admit it. Part of the thing of it is the time spent searching for the right track which has become a ritual of ours and one we have often done together on our respective devices whilst teasing the other about this months choice. I don't know, it may seem stupid to you but it's one of our many things and it works.

I thought I'd share this months which I sent yesterday, quite early in the month as my wife is going through a difficult time with her mum having a cancer operation, today as it turns out. This track says how I feel about her and what she has meant to me since we met as young kids. The track is H.O.L.Y by one of my favourite bands, Florida Georgia Line. We are going through a very difficult time and I wanted her to know how important she is to me. She cried. Then smiled, or so she told me...That's typical. Sometimes she laughs, depends on the track I send.

When this post hits the interwebs my wife will be at the hospital waiting for her mum to come out of surgery, 5 hours of it. She wanted to wait there for when her mum wakes up although I think it's also because she is so fearful something may go wrong. It's been a difficult couple of weeks leading up to the operation and will likely be so for some weeks to come yet. Caner is a bitch so who knows what will happen. What I do know is that my wife and I will face this together, will support each other and her mum and through the bond we have will get through it somehow.

Relationships are funny things; Many say they are so difficult and in truth they can be sometimes but I'd never go as far as that generalisation. People approach them in their own ways, some strange and seemingly odd to others, some in a more traditional way and some probably with an equal dose of each. For us we just do what we do and have never tried to define the essence of it. Maybe we simply can't do so. Our music thing is one way in which our relationship explores itself, and us each other. It doesn't matter if I send her Five Finger Death Punch singing Got your six or play My Immortal on my piano for her; We are together and on the same page, the same sheet of music, and completely in love with each other. Even after all these years.

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