The best mistakes I’ve ever made...

In a genuinely healthy way, music drives my day. I find myself lifted by music, motivated, impassioned, and energised, and from music can often find inspiration in the lyrics and often homespun philosophies it contains.

Making an early start the other morning I heard an introduction to a new song, and was drawn to it by the cello, that most elemental of string instruments, that visceral beauty that counters the fragility of the violin so beautifully. Then the male vocalist came on with a nasal sound, “Oh my God,” I thought, “this is a car crash,” as to describe the sound as organic was probably the description only a loving mother could give.

Then the melody, and the lyrics settled over me, on the back of a simple, stunning, arrangement to offer a true life experience, and one of the best pieces of music you are ever likely to hear. A group I have never heard of, but who I have since learned have a depth of musicality compared to the raw beauty of Queen in their prime, and a vocalist with thirty years of musical credits have combined as ‘The Divine Comedy,’ to produce ‘The Best Mistakes,’ and boy... is it worth a listen!

Actually, I say they, but Neil Hannon is the only constant member of the group, that enlists session musicians, but Hannon often plays all instruments except the drums in his chosen musical genre of ‘chamber-pop,’ and does all the vocals to boot! The lyrics in this one are possibly the most profound since John Legend’s ‘All Of Me,’ offered a depth of love we could all understand, and this one is about living life without regrets, in the most human of ways.

Hearing Hannon sing of thumbing the dog-eared pages of his life, re-reading confusing passages that never worked out right, and of the muddles and miscommunications that landed him there, of fights, arguments, late night conversations, and wasted tears, would make us all stop and think anyway, but with the music reeling us further and further in... it is stunning!

Then the chorus kicks in... “Well I have made my fair share of mistakes, I’m not an angel, but then again I’m not a fake, and I don’t regret a single day... they were the best mistakes I’ve ever made.” Now who can’t relate to that? He tries to throw his past out, to shed his skin, but finds time flying as he recalls being, literally, a poet, a preacher, a fool, and a wastrel, but one who doesn’t regret any of it, concluding that if he had to choose his time again he wouldn’t change a thing!

It’s powerful, clear, and delivered in such a way, with such honesty. It offers a life lesson that regrets can be experienced, and learned from, but are wasted! And by extension I guess, what you cannot change, it’s no use worrying about. No regrets then, for as Nouman Ali Khan writes, “Regret itself is a form of punishment.” It would be a shame if we felt we were defined by what we had done, or not, in the past, it’s happened, move on, get over it.

Mark Twain also wrote of the humanist notion of wasted regrets and pining over past mistakes writing that twenty years from now we will be more disappointed by the things we did and didn’t do, exhorting us to, basically, get busy now, that life is too short for regrets. We do tend, don’t we, to look back and think “What if...” Maybe instead we should do as Hannon suggests, and be comfortable with our mistakes... which we will make, and simply treat them as part of the experience of growing up, of life, and of living life in, and for... the future. Check out ‘The Best Mistakes!’