Swan Lake

The year is 1998, and it’s a school night. Like clockwork, my parents tell me to change out of my school uniform because we’re going to their friend’s house, just about five minutes away on foot. I was only about five years old at the time and couldn’t be left alone on the 1^st floor of a council flat. So my parents did what most would’ve done at the time if they couldn’t afford a babysitter. They took their kid with them. So, on I went.

As soon as we got there, I knew I’d be plonked on the brown armchair with a blanket as my dad turned it around so I could face the wall, and not the T.V. so that I could get a restful night for school the next day.

Like clockwork.

Much like my mom and dad, their friends also owned a PlayStation One and would spend countless nights playing a variety of titles, from Crash Bandicoot to Tekken. One game they would play that would remain a core memory for me 25 years on would be one without sight but of hearing. It was the latest game they all were obsessed with, taking turns to blast their way through levels, defeating mini-bosses, and collecting tokens to power up their character. While I had no idea what was going on as I faced the wall, I could certainly hear it. I knew the dreaded level was to emerge since they just had beaten whatever boss it was that had a maniacal laugh as a spring could be heard dismantling and popping.

It wasn’t until much later that I understood it was Tchaikovsky’s ‘Swan Lake’ in Parodius, but all I knew at the time was that I was truly terrified. It was a more dramatic and percussion-filled piece, with unnerving piano tones and crashing crescendos, not the delicate and story-rich feel the original piece has. Hearing that, along with women moaning and whining as bubbles popped from underneath them as they plunged to their deaths, was truly an interesting experience. It was one that would remain with me, 25 years later.

Without knowing, it would become the benchmark for my undying love for music in video games. It would also be the thing that would bring my father and me closer, with our love for their soundtracks, spending an immeasurable amount of time leaving titles and credits rolling so that we could listen to whatever amazing, composed pieces playing in the background.

My mother and father separated only about a year later, in 1999. Splitting time between both parents offered a different upbringing, like there were two versions of myself. Rules and regulations were paramount in my main upbringing with my mother, but life was free while I stayed at my father’s, and we bonded over our love for games.

Music holds such power over us, to transport us back to places that we wish we could stay forever in, and places we’d much rather not have to visit. Music holds the power to command our emotions and bring them forth, conjuring whatever scenarios are associated with that memory or emotion. It’s why the scattered piano at the beginning of the track known as ‘Theme of Laura’ in Silent Hill 2 makes me quiver with fear, or why ‘A Travel Diary’ in Soulblade brings fond memories of my dad spending hours trying to learn it on his recorder (it paid off, he learned it).

Over the years I learned that music is a love language. Albeit it may not be a traditional way of showing someone you love them, or even that you yourself can express fondness through music. In a lifetime between myself and my father however, music was and will always be our way of communicating, keeping in touch, or just showing each other that we’re thinking of one another. If that means continuing to be terrified of some mangled version of ‘Swan Lake’ in Parodius, or imagining us as Bub and Bob in the ending credits of Bust a Move 2, then so be it.