A Scrap of Paper and a Flood of Memory

After my usual walk through the quiet streets around the condominium here in São Paulo, I finally turned to the small boxes and folders I’d brought from Edinburgh almost a year ago. They’d been waiting patiently in a corner, holding fragments of a former life. What should have been a quick 30–40 minute tidy became hours, as these things always do. You open a box and suddenly you’re not sorting, you’re travelling. Every scrap of paper demands to be read, every photograph insists on being held for a moment longer than necessary.

Most of what I found in my old musical folders brought warmth, familiar names, half-forgotten tunes, scribbled setlists. But then one thin newspaper clipping surfaced, and the light shifted. A German newspaper cutting dated 14 October 2006. It carried with it a strange mixture of joy and ache.

The story behind it is worth telling.

In the spring of 2006, I was playing my usual Friday evening session in the Royal Oak pub in Edinburgh. During the breaks, as often happened, I chatted with some of the people who joined in or simply listened with a drink in hand. That night there were two Germans, one older, one younger. The younger man’s girlfriend had been hit by a motorbike and had broken her leg. It was serious enough that she’d be in hospital for several days. Because he had to return to Germany for work, her father, Norbert, had flown to Edinburgh to be with her.

At the end of my session, Norbert approached me and asked if any other musicians would be playing after me. I told him that Martin Boland, with whom I formed the duo Idle Beggars, would be starting in the lounge downstairs shortly. He asked when he could see us play together, and I told him to come back the next night.

And he did.

At the end of Saturday’s session, he spoke to both of us and asked if we’d be interested in going to Germany to play. He would arrange flights and accommodation. We said yes, of course, depending on dates. He gave me his details and asked me to email him so we could continue the conversation.

I sent the email a few days later.

Weeks passed with no reply, which wasn’t unusual with tourists. Then, out of the blue, an email arrived from Norbert asking for our availability in late September or October. After some back-and-forth, we settled on dates.

We flew to Köthen, just north of Leipzig, on 5 October. Three days of busking by day and gigging by night. Long hours, tired feet, and the kind of laughter that only comes from shared rhythm. We returned on the 9th, exhausted and happy. One day I might write more about that weekend.

But that clipping, that small, unremarkable piece of newsprint, brought me back to the heart of it all. The highs and the lows.

The highs were the nights playing with Martin as Idle Beggars. The harmonies, the mischief, the sense that music could hold the world together for a few hours. We had so much fun, and some truly great gigs.

The low was remembering that Martin is no longer here. We lost him far too soon in 2017. If you want to understand the kind of man he was, Christopher Silver wrote a beautiful tribute to him, well worth reading. Martin Boland (1963–2017). How do you pay tribute to a truly… | by Christopher Silver | Medium 

Thinking of Martin opened the door to memories of other musician friends who left earlier than they should have. Too many names. Too many stories cut short. It’s a reminder of how fragile life is, how quickly the ground can shift beneath us.

I had my own reminder at 44, when I suffered a heart attack. I was lucky, it wasn’t as serious as it could have been. And here I am, 26 years later. That experience brought me back into music after being away from the scene for fourteen years. Then, in 2022, I had to give up gigging because of my diplacusis.

Life gives, and life takes away. Sometimes gently, sometimes without warning.

It’s why I often tell people who hesitate to perform their music, or to pursue any ambition that matters to them, to go for it. You never know when something might take it away from you, or when you simply won’t be able to continue.

Do it while you can. Do it because you can. The moment is never guaranteed.

I didn’t expect a forgotten newspaper clipping to open all these doors again, to laughter, to grief, to gratitude. But maybe that’s what memories are meant to do. They remind us of who we were, who we loved, and what still matters.

So if you’re hesitating, don’t.

If you’re afraid, go gently, but go.

If something in you still wants to sing, let it.

Because life is fragile.

But meaning is not.

We create it every time we choose to live fully, even for a moment.