Music has always played an important role in my life: I enjoy making it - with my voice and whatever makeshift instruments I can come up with - as much as I enjoy listening to it. I've been collecting and sorting through tracks for about as long as I can remember using a computer, and through years, I've accumulated and lost dozen gigabytes of soundfiles of varied genres.

Still, I only went to the jazz symposium because a) the ticket was free, b) my friends went there, c) I had interest in jazz for some time now, but never went on to explore the genre. I was in a shitty mood that day - tired, lonely and confused; I went into the concert hall without expectations, having never attended any sort of live music show. My friend and I found a seat in the half-empty hall, and the symposium started in a few minutes.

From the stage, a balding man in a fair suit told us in a deep voice about what to expect. He started off talking about spiritual - marking it with a stress on the last syllable, with no attempt to even feign English accent when pronouncing the word - and how it originated from the negro population in the US. Behind him, in the back of the stage, a chorus of older women in white robes and older men in tuxedos started gathering without haste, in an orderly manner. The balding man - a Russian living in Berlin, a prominent Soviet and Russian jazz enthusiast - explained that the next composition - the next "spiritschuEL" - was titled "Deep River" and gave the translation into Russian. Then, after a round of applause towards the chorus, he went away, and the music started slowly, and the song began.

...I've never experienced anything such a beautiful sound before. The way they sang, the way music laid the background for the lyrics - it was unbelievably beautiful. Indescribably so. The sound was, indeed, like a deep river itself. The poliphony of voices flowed like a hasteless stream of clean water, as if filling the air with great energy - quiet, but powerful; with strength and not excitement but polite, non-intrusive and personal joy. I can only compare it, for I know no words that can express the feelings that I had that time, and I can compare to lying on fresh-cut grass in the warm summer night and watching the myriads of stars in the clearest sky as they shine and twinkle silently.

I kept in mind the name of the composition to find it and listen to it later. Between then and now, I rarely had access to the Internet. Looking for music to listen to reminded me of the great song I heard a while ago, and I've decided to search.

My expectations were quickly brought down when I realized that there's no video online that comes close to resembling what I saw and heard at the symposium. Everything's been either one person - a black woman, usually - singing "Deep River" alone while piano played in the backgroud or an orchestra providing poliphonic music without a word. I never bothered with looking for a video of the symposium because I realized what hearing the composition meant to me: even if I do manage to find the video - there were cameras live there, I remember - I would never be able to relive the experience I had through them, or even with their assistance. It wouldn't matter if I hear it once again because I'd hear something different - a reproduced version, a record rather than the authentic music that my ears caught while my eyes was closed and my friend sit nearby trying to videotape it with her phone. There's no replacement for this, and there never could be.

It made me wonder about experiences and memories. I never cared much for them, even if what happened meant a lot to me at the time. It doesn't mean I don't hold on to the memories I've formed - some, those exciting negatively or positively, are far more vivid than the rest, and I can still picture the scene - but I never enjoyed them, never cared for them later on. They were things that happened, and sometimes they come back to me, and I remember them as correctly as I can, but I never thought of them as something that will never happen again.

"Wow". This idea struck me like a hammer strikes an anvil. This thing I've experienced and enjoyed will never happen again; it was unique in its details and conditions, and no one will ever have the exact same feeling, let alone myself. How lucky I am to catch that? I never cherished spending time with people - even with people I enjoyed spending time with very much - because, to me, those were not events but cycles: they will happen again, in one form or another, like they did many times before. We'll have good time, we'll have spare time, we'll have the time of arguing, and it will go on. I never cherished it because of that.

Now, I will.

That's what I wanted to share with you, folks. You have a good time.