Are you living to the beat of your own drum?

It all started with a “Dip trip, flip fantasia”.

Back in 1993, owning CDs was a lofty teenage ambition worth striving for, especially if you happened to enjoy listening to the kind of music that didn’t get much radio airtime.

Having enough money to buy an actual album in an actual shop – in the days when those were still things found on the average high street - was a constant struggle. My kids look at me goggle-eyed when I tell them about how my friends and I had needed to sit beside the radio, waiting with hopeful anticipation that our favourite song would come on so we could capture the ephemeral reverberation of the sounds that fed our teenage souls by recording them to a blank cassette.

Luckily for me, I had an older brother and sister, also both big audiophiles. And while they certainly weren’t rolling in cash, they were shades less broke than I was.

Every few weeks, a new CD would appear as if by magic, and I was allowed to listen to the hallowed discs under pain of death that there would be no scratches, no finger-marks.

Years passed. Our album collections continued to expand until the commoditised abundance of Spotify took their place.

Many things in my life changed along the way. But some things didn’t.

The sounds of my youth have always stayed with me. No matter where I’ve been or what’s been going on around me, I always carried the music with me, like an inner soundtrack.

“Ladies and gentlemen, as you know we have something special down here at Birdland this evening, a recording for Blue Note Records…”

That, my friend, is the lyric that brought me across the threshold of one of the most revered jazz clubs in the world, Birdland on West 44th Street in Manhattan.

The song is Cantaloop. the album is Hand on the Torch by Us3.

I used to listen to it on repeat in my bedroom at home in Ireland, making a complete hash of the fast-flowing lyrics but caring not a jot because the rhythm was infectious. Later on, I danced alone to it in my student digs with just my reflection in the window for company. I let the deliciously grooving beat under my skin, and it became part of the soundtrack to my life, part of my story.

The part that beats with an energising and earnest pulse of possibility.

The part that, for a time, got overwhelmed and drowned out by the cacophony of other people’s expectations and self-imposed obligations.

It’s the same part that lives in all of us, the part that speaks our truth when only we let ourselves hear it.

Strolling around Manhattan on a bright and balmy Sunday afternoon, I happened to find myself in Hell’s Kitchen, revelling in the rare freedom of having no particular obligation to be in any particular place at any prescribed time.

And that’s when I saw Birdland, inconspicuously nestled across the road from a lush and imposing Inter Continental hotel.

On a spur-of-the-moment impulse, I went over to take a look at the programme and it turned out that there was an Afro-Latin orchestra playing that evening. And almost like a gift from the gods of serendipity, there were a few tickets left.

So I got me one.

Which is how I found myself inside the mythical jazz club that same evening, soaking up the velvety ambiance in the company of a mezcal negroni.

The walls are adorned with black and white photos of jazz legends. The lighting is warm on the eyes and restorative to the soul, the barman’s conversation is easy and non-intrusive.

There are many bars where I wouldn’t sit on my own. This was the perfect bar to do just that. I was alone but not lonely.?

With an agreeably empty bar stool on either side of me, my fingers tapped my cocktail glass to the jazz rhythms of the Caribbean, eyes riveted on the musicians in front of me and ears soaking up the soulful sound of people who live and love their craft enough to want to share their mastery with a generosity of spirit that lifts everyone lucky enough to experience it.

My 15-year-old self had internalised the lyric “Ladies and gentlemen, as you know we have something special down here at Birdland this evening…”, never for a second imagining that one day I would actually be in Birdland.

And yet, there I was: my 40-something-year-old self, savouring a cocktail, listening to jazz, surrounded by other people doing the same thing. In some ways I was a world away from the teenage girl I used to be, the one who had bopped around her bedroom, dip-tripping on flip fantasia.

But in the ways that matter, maybe I was reconnecting with the best of her: the dreamer, the purist, the idealist.

The possibilist.

I was feeling all the feels that came from realising, mindfully, that in this gloriously unplanned and unscheduled interlude, my past, present, and future selves were all beating synchronously to the rhythm of my own drum.

I was living on my time, tasting the flavour of a possibility seized.

And you know something?

There’s nothing sweeter than saying yes to an opportunity that reconnects us to the parts of ourselves that have been asleep.

My friend, my invitation to you is this: remember the dreamer you were before life and circumstances dimmed the fire inside you.

That flame, it’s our life force and it never goes out. For as long as there is blood in our veins and a beat in our hearts, it never goes out.

So, go do the things you dreamed about, be the person you imagined you would be.

It might only be for a few minutes as you sip a mezcal negroni in sublime solitude with just a jazz band for company.

But trust me when I say, nothing beats living to the rhythm of our own beat.

When you start to feel it, you'll never want to let it go again.

??AJ