Nights singing white satin

‘Nights singing white satin’. Did you ever wonder what that means? I didn’t, until tonight. I visited the local queer club in Delft: Outsite. While walking back to the station I suddenly wondered: what does it actually mean? So when I took the train from Delft to Amsterdam I switched on my laptop, started iTunes, to find out that the actual title of the song is ‘Nights in white satin’. Mais naturellement.

Since I was very young I have loved listening to music. That feeling of affection was probably given to me by my sister, who has a much better developed music taste than I have. She visits small pop concerts in Dublin of music stars nobody has ever heard about, but who she found on the internet. I adore her for that, as most of my music selection belongs to the so called popular category, not so exciting… Or maybe it was fed by my father, who often blew up the speakers while listening to the Doors’ ‘Light my fire’. I rather played my mothers’ sensitive music. Simon and Garfunkel or Herman van Veen.

‘What’s your favourite music?’, is the question I fear the most whenever being in a getting-each-other-to-know conversation. Honestly I never know what to say. Why? Because my taste of music has developed into a thousand different directions during the past years. I started listening Queen when Freddy Mercury died. I thought I could sing along very well, my mother thought differently. Even though she has never been pushing me into career moves, I can say she encouraged me not to start a singing career. And it still hurts.

Then I started developing my taste further. Most of the music I like is connected to something that happened in my life. It’s not about the vocal qualities or the high musical performance. It’s about the situation or person that touched me and which I connected to a particular song. ‘An Der Schönen Blauen Donau’, because my grand father was buried with it. Donna Summer’s ‘Last Dance’ because one night ended so great dancing on that song. ‘Unbreak my heart’, because I came out when Toni hit the charts. ‘Paint it Black’, because my parents finally allowed me to stay up to see Tour of Duty. ‘Damn those eyes’, because damn those eyes.

After I realised that my vocal qualities do not even meet the standards of Idols I also slowly started to discover that the song texts I sung where not really corresponding with how they were written. But how can I help it, as child I did not like the Dutch songs, so I was forced to sing along in a language I did not speak! And so I sang ‘I want to break free from a life as-za easy but I really neeeeeed, oooohhh ai want to break free’. Nobody ever told me!

A few weeks ago, when I was going out with people in Montenegro, I heard myself singing along a Serbian song … and I don’t even speak it! Imagine what I was singing…