My favourite childhood videos

I wanted to grab every single Disney movie available on video cassette back in my childhood days. I wanted to hug Barney the purple dinosaur and couldn't stand to think of him dying.

But what I used to watch, more than all these...

Madeleine (the cartoon about the twelve Parisiennes in two straight lines) and Disney's Sing-Along Songs.

Those were the most musical of all the shows I used to watch back when I was a kid. And if they were played and re-played, I'd have wasted my entire day watching it. I loved the music. I wanted to listen to it... and re-listen. And re-listen. And more often than not, the exact song would stick in my head, such that when I try to recall it, the music would be in my head. Every chord, every beat, everything. It was like I heard it real-time !

Of course, now I've outgrown most cartoons, with the exception of Disney films and Kingdom Hearts - that too, is rendered - and this shows I haven't totally outgrown Disney. It's become a part from me. Mom once told me that I might've gotten my accent from watching too much Disney ! (By the way, my accent is partly British, and whenever I pronounce French words I revert to a slight Loire accent.)

But more importantly, it was from watching Madeleine and Disney's Sing-Along Songs that I developed the ability of listening to complete songs in my head. Later, when I began composing, the habit grew - and I can now produce a complete composition inside my head, the way I expect each chord, each riff, each drum part, to sound.