A Life Well-Remembered.


Last night, while reading in bed, my mind wandered to the time I ate some chips in the green room of Trinity Arts Centre, Gainsborough. It was only after attempting to read the same sentence for the fourth or fifth time that I realised I wasn’t paying attention to my book. Not only that: it suddenly dawned on me how often I think of this seemingly unmemorable incident when my brain is in its resting state.

The question is: why has this one meal become ingrained in my memory? It wasn't special. I’ve eaten a lot of food backstage through the years. It's hardly an unusual situation.

They weren’t even good chips. They were pretty subpar - and not the sort of thing I wanted to eat before the two hours' worth of singing that lay ahead. That's one of the downsides to touring: you sometimes have to make do with what you can get.

What if, in years to come, this becomes my only vivid memory? What if I end my days lost at sea, wrestling with a great white shark and the only thing that comes to mind is this? I hope the sum-total of my life experience amounts to more than a portion of chips bought in Lincolnshire.  

It wouldn’t be so bad if I could remember the gig.

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