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I�m not really a Madonna fan as such, but music does �make the people come together�. It is something for which we have no explanation; there is no real reason for music to exist, or for that matter for dancing. We have lots of words and scrawlings on the side of caves to communicate with, so why do we choose to dance and sing about it? Why does drawing a bow (made from hair taken from the tail of a horse) across a sculpted piece of wood with wires and little piece of metal attached to it mean something to us, a something that we can call Mozart, or sadness, or elation?

I went to a gig on Friday night to see a friend of a friend play his shiny steel guitar in the style we call the blues. Ash�s playing is fantastic, he has both technique and soul, but he is missing years. Years of experience and playing to three people in a crappy little pub in Bumfuck, Australia; years of loving and losing and being beat up by emotion; years of dying slowly for want of an un-nameable thing. But the man that Ash was playing with had all this � a bald, angry, twisted man with a beautiful smile and a song that tears me apart every time I hear it (live or recorded). �You will surely love again� is Chris Wilson�s song, and as he played it on Friday night I closed my eyes and let myself drift back through the faded tapes of my memory.

That time with Adonian Matt, on the beach in Yamba after we had played one of the best gigs of our lives.

That time with Nicholas, standing at the top of the escalator, seeing him rise toward me, holding out his arms.

That time with Stuart, fumbling in the back of the Datsun, giggling and drunk and naughty.

The music took me away from the chattering and the drinking and the table, and it made me feel as if I were somehow more real inside than anything that was happening around me. �You will surely love again�. Am I worth it? Do I have to give that part of myself to anyone ever again?

People applauded the song and got on with their lives. The next number was a runka-chunka blues, �She�s Tough�, and around me people shook their arses in glorious oblivion while I sat and kept my memory tapes playing. Soon though, the change in pace and attitude of the music crept through to me, and I found myself up and dancing shaking my own arse, believing that everything was just as the music men said it would be. �Cause you can do that you know, with music, go from one emotion to another. You don�t have to be stuck with the blues, or with the rock, or with the syrup pop flavoured pop. You can dance, you can cry, you can do your homework. It�s magic stuff.

I went to bed later, humming �You will surely love again�. And I will.