I spent more days than I would have expected wondering about what happened to Manchester on the 22nd of May 2017. I felt sick and disoriented. I could not understand. I could not imagine me being so affected by something that happened a mile from me and did not affect anyone I knew. I kept on wondering how one could purposedly target a place that has children or teenagers. I could not understand. I could not move my mind from that and get on with my job.
I worked, don’t get me wrong. In fact, music had always been a medium for coping with all sorts of things. So I could not miss the radio show recording. But when it came to it, it became too much. The first 15 seconds were incomprehensible, I had to start again. Then I was completely out of it for 30 minutes so I had to start again. Then I made less sense for 45 minutes. It took 6 takes before I made any sort of sense.
I am not sure of anything in this world, no one is. Believing is the most difficult yet the most beautiful thing. It gives strength and courage. It fortifies the beholder and the object of their belief. But without a form, a shape, a smell, any connection to our senses that make things more real, almost truer, this immaterial concept is often misunderstood for non existent and as imaginary as only irrationality can create.
The whole thing plunged me into a weird place. On the one hand, I have been so proud of Manchester and how the whole thing has been handled. On the other had, one of the reasons I love Manchester, my adoptive home town, is its resolution to not be told who she is, even under emotional blackmail, and never be denied her inner beauty. Everyone is helping the way they can, and I could not be prouder of my fellow citizens. Abundance of Love and peace to the families and friends affected by this.
From the first time I stepped into this city in a saturated oil smell in the old remains of an old coach station, I believed in Manchester. The concrete city was set up in many more shades of greys than Jamie Dornan’s Christian. Yet there was more to it than met the eye or the nose for that matter.
And so I completely fell in love with her heart. The people’s warmth, their strength, their hard work and their welcoming were as many things that showed the rainbow between its superficial grey lines It is the town that made me find out again what it was to believe. And with that spirit shared by another million inhabitants, this faith is renewed every moment, in its successes and its challenges. We love Manchester. We ♥ MCR.
One never has time to get over things. People around us are in a hurry to get on with telling you what your situation has been holding them up with, They need to move on so YOU need to move on.
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