The Music Room-A Room Of One's Own

How people arrange their houses matters.
One of my fondest memories as a youth
was discovering that my new friends
refreshed their friendships through
keeping open the physical space
where they shared their interests,
which allowed those interests to change.

I met my earliest friends via my school,
a space where I did as I was bid. I chose little.
Outside the school my friend and I had nothing in common,
but through music we tried to create conviviality. 

I was 20, and mad about music, when I made friends
who would last. They were all just enough older.
They had plenty of evenings for sharing music they liked
and teaching to me why their music was good
after I recovered from being amazed
by the variety of design of the record covers.

Before then I had been starved of such choice.
The family house was set up around the television
and what my father thought were good programmes.
This meant sport and other non-verbal competition,
the communication of which taught me nothing.

Music, even recorded music, meant musicians
agreeing with each other through how they played.
However much music was non-verbal, dad had ears of tin.
The din of hierarchies forming themselves were the key
to how his hearing worked. Dad loved seeing others
make themselves the boss, with no sense of process.

But my friends were different,
hierarchies had to be accidental
and would always be subject
to the great leveller, change.

None of us knew who Virginia Woolf was
but we would have 'got' her 1929 feminist plea
for women to have space and money to be themselves,
rather than be confined within the image of their family.

The best thing about rooms for sharing music
is how the host inspire their guest to create their own.
Whether guest, or host, that is what I did....