Yesterday afternoon I was walking around town and it threatened to rain again so I sat inside St Giles Cathedral, (how very apt), and for almost an hour I listened to CD1, which is of course the original album set of IMW, all of it, yes all 10 tracks, including Spin Away, and some of those tracks I have not heard in their entirety since I last listened fully in ’86.
In Mysterious Ways, why John, why?
Why John in ’85 did you sneak this relationship wrecking ‘confessional’ up on me? Did I ever abandon you, even in ’83 when you altered course yet again, I still stayed for the ride, and I trusted you at the wheel …
In 1980 you changed my life with your blunt but strangely soothing words of ‘cenotaph’ ‘sunlit concrete’ ‘echo paths’ and ‘reservoir’, and I wanted to ‘drive by 1958’ and experience whatever mystery it pertained to.
Then In ’81 you unexpectedly brought me even more beauty in the drama of endless skies and sweeping landscapes, and you made me want to ‘burn away in light and silver’ and live forever in your modernist, metaphorical vision of perfection.
But in ’85, I think you forgot that I was out there, your admiring fan, as I waited expectantly each year for your return. You had grown rapidly as an artistic adventurer, fighting your way over a fantastic landscape of musical discovery, and by then you were probably a King, living safely in a Palace of creative possibilities, no doubt with life’s rich rewards, and you no longer had any need of my love
With a little help from itunes, and In the word’s of Van ‘the Man’ Morrison, (the Obi Wan Kenobi to your Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader on IMW), and taken from Van’s 1991
‘Hymns to the Silence’ CD, where all the song titles there seem so fitting to what I need to say, after 23 years, John, still today with IMW,
“I’m not feeling it anymore”. I wanted electro, but you gave me Celtic soul, maybe you felt in your life
“Some peace of mind” inside, but you just left me feeling cold, and outside.
Why with this album did your perfect pattern’s of keyboard’s, drum machines, and cut and paste lyrics have to become
“So complicated” in attitude for me, and you probably thought that you were being so simple, so pure in your self expression. Surely you knew that
"I can't stop loving you" , I bought all your previous albums, so you must have known, but you left me feeling like the
“Village idiot” amongst the friends with whom I would always champion you, from Metamatic onwards, and yes, also through the Golden Section.
I twisted someone’s arm to drive me to another town to see you in ’83, wildly exclaiming that it would be all ‘neon lights and moody sounds’, but half-way through the Golden Section gig she turned to me and said “it’s all a bit ‘boy next door’ isn’t it?” I hid my embarrassment, for you were my hero. I looked away as “my voice just tumbled on a long delay”, and as you probably continued to sing “Endlessly, endlessly…” I probably blocked out my friends comment’s with visions of “skyscraper shadows on a carcrash overpass” chasing through my head.
“Why must I always explain?” your genius to those who have never felt your music make their heart race, or their mind spin in awe, like I have
Will listening to CD2 of the IMW 2008 remaster make me want to let you
“Take me back” to that place where we parted in ’85? (for such a long time, and seemingly forever), or will I still find more
“Hymns to the silence” that was left after you faded away out of my life, when you chose not to sing anymore for me the beautiful and strange song’s I’d loved you for.
When you rescued me from my teenage misery in 1980, you spoke to my soul, from out of nowhere I heard you singing on a radio for the first time, “Click-click drone, Click-click drone, Click-click…”