About Mike Read-Shaw
At no time during our lives, are we ever more than the product of our experiences.
Those who have had the good fortune to be granted only good experiences from which to learn should shine like beacons, examples of all that is admirable in mankind. We may, not unreasonably, expect to find a thoroughly decent, caring and compassionate person standing before us - as, indeed, will often prove to be the case.
But what of those who have not been so fortunate? Is it also reasonable for us to expect brutality from the serially brutalized, or abuse from those who've suffered abusive childhoods? Must the child always be the father of the man? I say: 'No; this can never be allowed to be the case.'
I consider my music for The GOSPA Oratorio to be the second greatest achievement of my life.
Second??
Here's why:
My greatest achievement is - and always will be - my family. For, despite having had no model to work from, no father from whom to acquire my own skills as a parent or as a husband, my adult life has been blessed with the unconditional love and support of a sensitive wife and two thoroughly decent (and oh-so-very normal!) daughters.
Better yet, I have all of this within a gloriously warming atmosphere of security, mutual respect and, above all else, compassion.
I will never be fully able to express my gratitude and love to these three wonderful people; and so, unsurprisingly perhaps, it is to them that I dedicate every dot and dash of my music.
But not just to them, for, consider this:
If, as I truly believe, the quality of our lives is the product of our own experience, so my music, too, must be a reflection of mine.
I can do no more, then, than to also dedicate my music for The GOSPA Oratorio to my mother.
I know with absolute certainty that, when she abandoned me at three months of age into a childhood marked by casual brutality, cold indifference and the inability to even guess at the concept of 'family', she became just as much a victim as myself.
Father Jozo Zovko, the former Medjugorje parish priest, has suggested praying like this:
Jesus, I have forgiven; Jesus, forgive me.
I have tried, through my music, to affirm a simple truth: