I have written, like many others before, at how music can jog something inside, however dormant. My memory, being what is is, always welcomes the input that music brings, no matter how small, how trivial it might seem. It is like the opening of long-shuttered doors, the glimmer of something that was and might yet be again. Not in its original form, of course, but bearing a pleasing resemblance.

So walking though the CBD a few days ago, I chanced on a shop that was not playing Christmas songs (though nothing wrong with that). The song that was playing was "Concovado" by Tom Jobim and I recognised the arrangement almost immediately as being from a very early album from the 1960's. The English title "Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars" has been covered almost as extensively as "Garota de Ipanema", most eloquently, (IMHO) by Frank Sinatra on the seminal album he made with Jobim. But as usual, I digress.

That early recording of "Concovado" that I heard in the shop was sufficient to sweep me back to the house of my teens. I was in my own room. My mother came into the adjacent loungeroom and removed the LP from its sleeve. The album The Composer of Desafinado, Plays, was one that I heard often enough, especially when she was unhappy. The power of that memory is striking, reinventing spaces, people, scenes and feelings. If they are not entirely accurate, that's okay. There is a truth at the heart of them that matters.