May The 4th Be With You...

Today is 4 May, 2012. As far as I know not a significant date as far as representing the anniversary of anything in particular, although I am sure it will have numerous significances for many people.

One such for me is in the fact that today I visited a Bluebell Wood nearby to where I live in Worthing, in West Sussex, just as I did about this time last year, in those couple of weeks when the bluebells are in bloom, in those ancient woodlands that we possess in the UK and which, at this time of year, are carpeted with the most resplendent sight.

I was surprised to discover recently that such a thing does not take place in Australia, where one of my blog followers lives. She had seen pictures of the bluebells in Bloom, but there is no equivalent event to that which in the UK has become so associated with the coming of Spring, and although the date might vary according to the weather, it will happen every year as long as there are tracts of woodland in which they can grow.

That this visit had taken place this year on May 4 is totally coincidental. It might have taken place on any day say a week either side of today, and the bluebells would still have been there.

But I will remember that it was today, May 4, that I visited the bluebell wood this year for perhaps a peculiar reason.

For fans of the Star Wars films, today has achieved a kind of significance that is both humorous and ridiculous in equal measure.

May The Force Be With You is clearly a memorable quote from the film, and the fact that today is May 4 has been adopted as significant because of the similarity in sound of May 4th with May the force be with you.

What this perhaps demonstrates is the way in which meaning can become associated with very slight things. Things of absolutely no consequence whatsoever.

It is simply a capacity of the human mind that exhibits itself in all kinds of ways, so that you can ask several people to look for example at an apparently meaningless set of marks on paper, and they will each be able to give some meaning if you ask them what they see, perhaps hinting that there is an image to be seen.

The human brain has the capacity to create meaning where none exists, and to some extent this is an essential component of our capacity to interpret things like writing. Which after all, is simply marks on paper.

That the coincidence of this date sounding something like that particular quote from Star Wars has had some particular consequences for me, is of course unique to me, as all of my own experience is.

So for example, the presenter of a radio show on BBC Radio 2 used the fact of this date in this week as an excuse to ask his listeners to send in their suggestions for music suitable because of this date for an interstellar playlist.

I was able to get my suggestion read out on the radio, because of the anecdote that I used in my letter sent by e-mail.

I suggested the music from Doctor Who that was used at the culmination of series three, when Rose, the Doctor's companion, is trapped in an alternative universe. Forever.

It just so happens that a good friend of mine was the singer that performed on this track, and the fact that she performed on this track was the cause of the BBC switchboard becoming clogged with enquiries as to whom the voice belonged, as it was so beautifully ethereal. Listeners were asking to whom the voice belonged.

I sent an e-mail to my friend, Melanie Pappenheim, to tell her that I had obtained a mention of her name associated with an anecdote about how you haven't lived unless you have been in a saloon car with a soprano warming up her voice before nine o'clock in the morning. With the windows closed.

Which is what Melanie would recognize and remember as the context in which we worked together when I was the Education Officer for Opera North in Leeds. We undertook many workshops together in primary schools, and I have watched in awe as Melanie's career has developed.

In return for my notification of the late night mention of the song in which she received so much profile, achieving her debut performance at the Royal Albert Hall in the Doctor Who Prom, I have been pleased to let her know some of the things that I have been up to since we last communicated.

It turns out that Melanie was on BBC 2 this week, as a guest on the Jools Holland programme where she was performing an extract from the opera she is performing in June at English National Opera, written by one of the founder members of the pop group Blur. Damon Albarn.

Everything has consequences, even those things which might have begun as some stupid joke on the part of Star Wars fans.