I distaste questions that start with anything similar to ‘what’s your favourite’. Not really my thing. But despite everything, there was one time where such a question kept me thinking for days. It was summer and I had three months of work experience to do in a music studio in East London. I was staying with my family. One night we had dinner to celebrate my uncle who had turned 50. My cousin of seventeen asked him what his favourite five days in his life had been, so far. I focused on my dinner so I didn’t have to focus on answering this question. She said, no, not favourite five, favourite day of all times. My uncle said it had definitely not been his wedding day, and we all laughed. And also definitely not the day his children were born, way too stressful. My cousin said this question had kept her thinking for a while now. She told us that her favourite day was during a holiday in France, when she surfed all day long on a clear breeze, and had pizza with her friends afterwards. A simple day. She said, yes, I would love to relive that day. No, I thought, it was not about reliving a day, it was about your favourite day. The conversation took turns about what the difference was between reliving and favourite days. The most amazing places on the earth. Best meals you ever had. All forgotten. In the days after this stupid question, I was damned to think everywhere all the time of what my answer would have been. Under the shower, during my walks in the park. When musicians came recording in the studio, I would look at them and wonder, what would be a moment you want to relive? Who are you?
It was a warm day when I was fourteen. Dad and I walked along a road in Soho. It was a Sunday. We had nothing to do, it was an Easter holiday, football may be cancelled, who knows, but we were bored because there was not much to live for. We talked about some simple things.
‘Shall we get ice cream?’ Dad offered, but, ‘Oh, it’s closed anyways.’
We walked some streets further and on the corner the record shop was the only place that was open. Dad and I decided to go in. I had never really listened to music before, I don’t know why, it just never crossed my mind to sit and listen to music. Dad signaled me to come over, he was hidden somewhere between the racks.
‘Here, old boy, put this on.’ He put some headphones on my young ears and put a record in the player. Suddenly at my right I heard violins, and left of me a base. It was something out of this world. I remember then, that I looked outside, to one of the two big windows of the store. Outside there were two people in what seemed like a neverending embrace. They were so thin. They must have been addicts or anorexic patients, it almost seemed that they were one person, so thin. In their embrace, they could not even touch each other because of their thinness. There was a pack of visible air between them. Their faces and jawlines seemed to point at each other like arrows. They looked sad.
I then felt my Fathers hands on my shoulders and his head next to my headphones. As we stood there listening to the music side by side, and I watched these thin sad people, I wondered where their hunger had gone. How you could become so, so thin. Of course, from that moment everything changed. But my father was a good father, and he put that music to my ears, and gave me one good thing.