The car radio is for me a sine qua non of travelling alone. Depending on my mood or the time of day it might be Radion 4 (serious and thoughtful), Radio Scotland ( local at times parochial though no worse for that), Classic FM (sometimes flipped to another channel when those ludicrously hyped up or condensed milk gelatinous adverts come on!), occasionally Northsound (even more parochial) and because a young friend set it on the pre-sets, Capital. Every now and then I hear a song, or some music I like and I go chasing a copy of it. Quite a number of CD's have been bought on the evidence of hearing one track on the radio - and some have been life enhancing and some were a waste of money to me and a source of money to the charity shops.
Sitting one day waiting for Sheila up a leafy suburban street in Aberdeen I sat watching a lesser spotted woodpecker doing its heid-baning thing on a tree trunk feet from the car. At the same time I was listening to Garrison Keillor, the Minnesota comedian talking about a new CD he had made with the American opera star Frederica Von Stade. The CD was a collection of songs about cats, all set to classic tunes from various genres, classical, country western, light opera. I loved it and bought it. Here's the In and Out Song
I buy books. Anyone asked for a defining fact about JMG would be likely to mention books. After picking up a parcel from the post office I got into the car and sat for 5 minutes or more listening to the most haunting music I'd heard in a long time. It was Advent, and Classic FM were paying a then little known saxophonist, Christian 
Forshaw. The track was "Let all mortal flesh keep silence", and I have played that CD for 10 years and it still makes me stop, sit down, listen and get up amazed, and deeply satisfied that for those moments, I have worshipped, and heard again deep calling to deep. For me this ancient hymn, and this composition with saxophone, describe in sound the mystery and majesty of the Incarnation, and touch the deep chords of that miracle we call the Incarnation. Here's Forshaw's Let all Mortal Flesh Keep Silence.
The music of Keillor that evokes laughter and a love for the ridiculous, and the music of Forshaw that gives sound to profundity, longing and awe, accidentally heard, and now intentionally loved, listened to as two voices in the choir of my own experience.
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