Manouche, Mankind

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It's funny how the oddest connections rear their heads when trying to come up with these nightly scribbles. I was just watching a Rick Beato YouTube interview with Joscho Stephan, the guitarist who currently inhabits the world of Gypsy Swing, or Manouche and carries the torch for the genre, alongside other greats such as Birelli Lagrene; the style of jazz guitar that was made internationally famous by the late, very great, Django Reinhardt. In a post from a couple of years ago, I mentioned a trip to France back in 1983 with John and Sandra, not long after they got together as a couple. We travelled down to their place near Aberystwyth on the train, and the following day the four of us drove across to Ramsgate for the ferry to France. From the moment we left Wales, to the moment we fetched up at the little Gîte we'd booked in the tiny hamlet of Saint-Jean le Vieux, and all the way back again, the soundtrack to the journey was dominated by Django, also mentioned in this other post of mine, in which I also gained inspiration from Joscho. The great thing about writing this daily journal is exercising these very connections and oft-times expanding out into unrelated excursions that only spring to mind on the spur of the moment whilst typing. The brain is itself just an ever-evolving mass of electro-chemical connections, which like the physical body needs exercise to maintain its health. External stimuli are constantly needed to build new connections and ensure that the mind - a product of the brain's very activity itself - remains alert to the world around us. Music, art and language are the drivers of this: maintain good use and expansion of these very human facilities and your brain will thrive, neurological disease notwithstanding. Keep on keeping on...

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