{"id":110,"date":"2003-11-23T13:17:00","date_gmt":"2003-11-23T13:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/174.142.75.173\/~trekkie1\/wordpress\/?p=110"},"modified":"2003-11-23T13:17:00","modified_gmt":"2003-11-23T13:17:00","slug":"the-power-of-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andy-thomson.net\/index.php\/2003\/11\/23\/the-power-of-music\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power Of Music"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I wanna tell you a story.<\/p>\n<p>My Dad died from cancer 2 years 8 months ago tomorrow. <\/p>\n<p>He (we) was lucky in that he had Pancreatic cancer which is normally totally untreatable, however, Dad&#8217;s cancer was a very rare one which was treatable (but uncurable). <\/p>\n<p>One day he was to start some cheamotherapy and was being driven to hospital by my Brother. Dad was panicing, as you can imagine he was in a very stressful position. Anyway, he was in the car and his mind was racing. The radio was always on in the car, as Dad&#8217;s worry grew every inch he moved closer to the hospital _Three Little Birds_ by _Bob Marley_ came on the radio.<\/p>\n<p>*It changed Dad&#8217;s life.*<\/p>\n<p>He listened to the lyric and realised this wasn&#8217;t how he wanted to be &#8211; he had to use his energy to fight not for worrying. He saw a message in the music, in the fact that it came on at exactly the right time to make a difference to him. <\/p>\n<p>That song became (and still is) our family&#8217;s anthem in times of despair. We played it at my Dad&#8217;s funeral because that would have been the message he wanted to give everyone that loved him and was in pain. <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s such a special song to me now &#8211; it&#8217;s synonymous with my Dad. It feels like a message from him. It makes me feel like he&#8217;s here in even a little way because now those words feel like they are his. Thank you Bob Marley.<\/p>\n<p>I marvel at the power of music, that such a simple thing can make such a massive difference. I love music, the first thing I bought when I got my first paycheck, in Japan, was a stereo.<\/p>\n<p>Here we go, my top 10 songs that mean something to me:<\/p>\n<p># Bob Marley &#8211; Three Little Birds<br \/>\n# Foo Fighters &#8211; My Hero (makes me think of my Dad)<br \/>\n# Puff Daddy &#8211; Every Breath You Take (even my Dad liked this one!)<br \/>\n# The Supernaturals &#8211; Smile (Nats gigs with Mike)<br \/>\n# QFX &#8211; Freedom (reminds me of the summer I left school)<br \/>\n# Reef &#8211; Hands (second year at uni)<br \/>\n# Oasis &#8211; Stop\u00c2\u0081 Crying Your Heart Out (just beautiful)<br \/>\n# Slade &#8211; Cos I Love You (last year of uni, getting pissed with Ian)<br \/>\n# The Beatles &#8211; Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds<br \/>\n# Cast &#8211; Walkaway<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure it would be different if I did this tomorrow. I bought a copy of Bob Marley&#8217;s greatest hits yesterday (because of _Three Little Birds_) I guess that&#8217;s where all this came from.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wanna tell you a story. My Dad died from cancer 2 years 8 months&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-japan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andy-thomson.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andy-thomson.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andy-thomson.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andy-thomson.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andy-thomson.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/andy-thomson.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andy-thomson.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andy-thomson.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andy-thomson.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}