Music and dreaming

As I grew older, my sister had a record player in our bedroom.  It was the sort that could hold a pile of LP's and drop each one gently onto the spinning turntable, when the last one was finished playing.  Pretty great invention, I thought at the time.

Anyway, I would lay on my bed and listen to some of her music - from memory she probably liked all sorts of music, but my most favourite choices were her stacks of Broadway Musicals.  Sometimes, on a quiet night, when I was still quite young, we would go to bed, and I would drift off to sleep with such wonderful songs and music  from Rodgers and Hammerstein or Lerner and Lowe playing softly in the background.

By the time I was about 10, my love for this music had grown immensely.  As I would lay in bed at night, I would imagine scenes where these songs were being sung, and get lost in the 'movie' that was happening in my mind. I loved the music from Flower Drum Song, West Side Story, South Pacific, Irma la Douce, My Fair Lady...I had never seen any of these musicals performed, so I was free to create my own story lines.  It was wonderful!

I remember how excitedly one day I had hopped downstairs to the kitchen to tell my Mum and Dad that I had just written a stage show, and it was a musical.  I was incorporating all of my favourite songs from the LPs I listened to at night, and had an idea of sets and choreography.  I was so excited, and wanted to know how I could start my production.  I was a bit flattened when they told me that it would be almost impossible due to royalty payments and property rights of the composers.  I was disappointed, but never lost the excitement of that day.  The music still made me picture my musical the way it was meant to be performed, and in my imagination it was a brilliant success!!