The soundtrack game

As a student, we would play a game called "the soundtrack game" which basically consisted of choosing an apt piece of music for any given moment in time. It was a game with no real point to it (though at the time, it certainly took our minds off Finals) and it ambled on as our lives did. We were often on the look out for someone too sexy for their shirt, for example (it was the early 90s after all) and lived in hope of it one day raining men (though I'm not sure it ever did) and during our Finals, if I remember rightly, it was a toss up between 'It's the End of the World as We Know It ' and 'Under Pressure'.

Silly though it may have been, I think, looking back, that it did give us a heightened awareness of musical irony (if such a thing exists!). It meant our taste in music was eclectic (we were devasted when our Tammy Winette concert was cancelled, for example) and we were also highly appreciative of genius, 'soundtrack moments' when they cropped in a film. The self-absorbed mother (Marisa Paredes) singing "Piensa en Me" in Almodovar's "High Heels", for example! That solitary tear hitting the floorboards! Oh, the melodrama!... Oh how we loved it!

I think, to some extent, I'm still playing the soundtrack game to this day. I may not consciously be choosing apt, witty tracks to accompany my (rather domestic) life any more (she says, quickly!). But I still have a real appreciation for the impact of the right piece of music at the right moment in a film - and I think making the right choice of music is probably the most important part of developing new material for our theatre workshops (I've discussed this, so I won't burble on about it now). I still have eclectic music tastes and spend an inordinate amount of time (when I'm working on a play) listening to the same piece of music over and over again. (And I mean over and over again. I may look like an ordinary housewife, trudging - headphones on - home from the supermarket or off to get the kids, but my inner soundtrack is actually busy listening to David Bowie's 'Space Oddity', for the hundredth time that day).

And this brings me to a curious observation. Headphones! Maybe it's because, with the pushchair years finally behind me, I can actually get on a bus again, or maybe it's because I have recently moved back to the city, but I'm suddenly aware (as I somehow wasn't before) that everyone - and I mean EVERYONE (even little old ladies!) - seems to wear headphones nowadays.  So, although it may look like we're trudging through our grey, city lives as we sit there, staring blankly out of the window, we are, in fact, all enjoying our music - immersed in our own personal soundtracks, as it were! Behind those slightly dazed faces, there's no telling what orgies of reggae, salsa, rock... or the Best of Cliff Richard are going on. So, as the globe warms up around us and the economy slumps to new depths, I think this is one aspect of modern life that has actually improved. Yeap! I would venture that bus rides and traffic jams - and even walks in the park are now that bit more enjoyable, thanks to modern technology - and the presence of music.

Could it be - I wonder - that the "soundtrack game" - that silly, little timefiller all those years ago (back in the days of sony walkmans, for goodness sake!).... has finally caught on? Could it have gone global?!!