Things that go together. That sums up what life's all about really. Be it food, people or food and people. My favourite discovery of the moment on this theme is the book The Time Traveler's Wife and PJ Harvey's album White Chalk. These go together so well that it's hard to believe that Audrey Niffenegger wasn't listening to PJ Harvey when she wrote the book. But as White Chalk wasn't released until 2007, then it seems unlikely. Unless time travel was involved of course.
At first you don't really listen to the music, it's just a haunting and atmospheric background onto which the characters of the book are gently painted. And as you begin to recognise the characters, the melodies of the songs creep into your consciousness too. Then when you start to care about Clare and Henry, you hear the lyrics whispered directly into your ears, echoing the meaning of the words on the page and adding another dimension to the experience.
About a fifth of the way through the book, the supernatural, melancholy, unsettling yet strangely uplifting feelings you get from the story and the music build up and up and then implode in your head with the impact of watching the end of ET when you were 6, at the same time as being at someone's funeral in the future. You're left with tears in your eyes, and your mind reeling in a completely different time and place, only just aware that in the present you're on the tube on the way to work, and you have to get off at the next stop.
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