Reconstructing stories

When I was just turning 15, I received a real treasure.

My eldest sister's boyfriend lent me his collection of CDs by a certain band that I used to like. I had listened to this band since I was a kid, because they received quite extensive airplay. They were, in fact, a real legend in the country I live in. I knew quite a bunch of their songs, but had never dived into their discography; after all, this was in the year 2000, and CDs and records were relatively rare and precious items for me back then. So to receive that collection of CDs, impeccably organised and in near pristine condition, was an act of generosity that blew my mind, even though I was still too young to understand its significance and magnitude.

I've had many "musical love affairs" over the decades, way too many to mention. Every once in a while, I'd bump into an artist or a record that would completely redefine me as a person, and make me realise that the universe of musical possibilities is much more vast, colourful and exciting than I could imagine. This particular band was one of those occasions, but it had a significant difference: I listened to them as a teenager, and they sang in my language. We tend to be flooded by music in the English-language here, and the music made in my own language always tended to be either too grown up, oblique and obscure, or too juvenile and simple (imagine, "too juvenile" for a 14-year-old!). This band, though, hit the bullseye for me, not just because the lyrics found a way to penetrate my subconscious with irresistible force, but because the music had was this perfect mixture of simple and imaginative, direct and profound. They did with four chords what other people couldn't do with twenty.

Recently, when I showed a drawing of mine to some friends, they spotted a problem with the proportions that I could see on screen, but that I just couldn't see on the actual pencil drawing on paper. One of my friends said that, when I saw the drawing on the screen, my brain was "reconstructing" the image, and this the problem became visible. This made me realise that, when we take something and "transplant" it to another world, a simple process of reconstruction happens, and we're led to reevaluate the significance and power of certain things in our lives.

And that is what I intend to show here in the next few weeks: the result of a process of reflection and rediscovery of a lifelong passion, a love letter to a bunch of songs that helped shape the person that I am today, and a story of how music can take over our lives and bring us to extremes of passion and emotion. And all that is told by ponies.