Nocturne

"Through music you can express something that you can't express in words and that you maybe don't even know… it's a line to the soul" Professional horn player, Carla Blackwood, performs Nocturno by Franz Strauss. From listening together to this short piece of music, a conversation opens up about the importance of music. Food for the soul, music reveals to us something of what it is to be human. Music lets us engage with the abstract and the intangible and, especially in a modern society that encourages us to focus on what is tangible and material, this is more important than ever. "There's more to being human than our conscious reality." Carla also talks about how music exposes that very human struggle between striving for perfection and the acceptance that, actually, perfection can never be attained. It's a valuable life lesson, this notion of "listening kindly to yourself." She reflects also on how music, memory and place become woven together and help form our identity. The importance of recognising your roots and where you are from, is one that is perhaps downplayed in Western cultures. But our "soul country" powerfully shapes the person we become.