Vancouver to Seattle. 1983 to 2007.

1983. I’m sixteen. Home is a rural town surrounded in lakes. Between bodies of water lie orchards and ranch land: apples and cattle. Music molds an escape, bourgeoning at my friend Joel’s house, two doors down, after school. His big brother’s Pink Floyd, AC/DC, The Cars. Along with the influence of my elder sister: The Beatles, Beach Boys, Elton John.

When my age reached a suffix of teen, I worked after school. Had disposable income. Or rather, had income, and disposed of it. Spent it on records, then cassettes and a Walkman. Something about that coming of age, deciphering musical preference. That to me was growing up. Identity. Persona emerging through music. Akin to a sculptor and stone. Chip away what shouldn’t be there. In my case, like many, tunes forced upon us: AM radio, carols, and hymns. But for each of us, that excessive stone eventually got swept away, the waterboarding of music belonging to others. Lyrics and chords that simply didn’t speak to us as individuals. No, that comes later, as saplings sprout branches and leaves.

The brain paves its path, develops and grows. Temporal lobe and the scaly recesses of limbic cortex. Lizard impulses of kickdrum and snare, the gut-hum of bass and guitar. And words, often screamed by some rebel adorned in tight trousers. Someone you hold in esteem and your parents disapprove of. Two things unfailingly linked.

But as I found my own musical way, a mosaic of country and folk, pop and hard rock, one voice resonated. A Glaswegian by birth, Sydneysider by association. Singer-songwriter Colin Hay, the face of Men at Work, world’s biggest band for a time. The five-piece ensemble was touring their second album, enough sales and songs for a stadium tour. And with my savings not yet squandered on vinyl or tape, I bought a bus ticket to haul me 500 kilometres to the show at Vancouver’s Pacific Coliseum, near the water that connected the songwriter’s new home to my own.

It was my first big arena concert. I was on the floor, endless rows of folding chairs with neck-craning views. I still feel the anticipation. Awe. Even in that sprawling venue, Colin owned the room, the banter of a true storyteller. Together we experienced an evolution, shared stories and song. The intimacy of 10,000 friends.

Fast forward a quarter century, and I’m crossing the Canadian-American border, driving south to see my songwriting hero. The border guard asks what’s taking me into The States? I tell him.

Where? he asks.

I name the venue, a small pub in a Seattle suburb.

When’s the show start?

I tell him that too.

You’ll never make it, he says.

Which I take as a challenge, and arrive at the show shortly after Colin’s begun. To hear every song that’s a part of me. New banter, a lifetime of stories. More evolution of song. Yet a hint of melancholy blankets the space. Filters its way through the air like the stone dust of youth. What we thought had been swept out for good.

Colin then strikes familiar harmonics, one song to finish the show. Music collectively owned by us all. Waiting for My Real Life to Begin. The sensation the same as that stadium show, two-and-a-half decades earlier. But honed, an edge to the stone. In other words, honesty. Life. No longer waiting. And yet, waiting still.

Stereo Story #714

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Bill Arnott is a songwriter, poet, and bestselling author of the Gone Viking travelogues. His column Bill Arnott’s Beat runs in several magazines, and for his travels he’s received a Fellowship at London’s Royal Geographical Society. When not trekking with a small pack and journal, Bill can be found on Canada’s west coast, making music and friends.