Automatic for the people

My mother travelled from Scotland to Hong Kong a few weeks ago, and she brought with her a CD by a Scottish singer/songwriter, David Heavenor, called "The Automatic Eye". This was a more personal gift than it sounds: David is a family friend who used to spend time at our house in the 70s and he is one of those figures from the past who I remember through the filter of summer gardens and heat on the tarmac with the strumming of a guitar as backdrop; he seemed to like spending time with the kids, the price for which was always a story; and the tales he used to tell us ("and the captain said, tell us a tale!") , including the legendary story of the hut in the woods, with its genuinely terrifying denouement, still burn in my mind. The gentle, unmistakeable Scottishness of his voice and its clear timbre contain so many things that I can't even name which are all to do with my memories of childhood, and my undeniable nostalgia for the place where I come from, which, at the risk of sounding sentimental, often seems even further away than 6,000 miles.

I've always been distrustful of people who sing unnaturally, in an accent other than their own, as if ashamed ("Brown Sugar! Just like a young girl should!") ; and I love those voices which in song are no more than a gear shift away from the spoken word: like David's.

The best track on the CD (what cheesy radio DJs call "the standout track") is called "Sign In a Stranger" and lines keep recurring to me, sitting at my desk in the office in the glass edifice where I spend my day, or lying awake at night worrying about work:

building up like storms,
bursting in mid-air

When David sings, in a hush, "I'm walking behind you, I'm climbing the stairs", I'm in a darkened, damp Edinburgh close with someone I can't have. It's strange being transported by something as simple as a song, but I realise that that's what I love about good music, that it can speak to you on so many levels: even though I now know nothing about David, his experiences, his life, I feel as though I know everything I need to know.