Evaporation
Aug. 3rd, 2005 08:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tinhuvielartanisIn limited experience with poets and songwriters, I have discovered how difficult it can be to draw out the artist's interpretation of their work. Most usually, they prefer you work with your own interpretation and make the experience your own unique one. I admire and support such an attitude, and strive to do just that with songs and poems that strike me on a particular level. There was one occasion, though, where I successfully got the artist's interpretation of his song simply by publishing my own thoughts.
Of course, I'm speaking of Barry Andrews. I'm proud to say I've never asked him what a song means, not because I haven't wanted to; rather, I was just too cowardly. When I was still maintaining the Shriekback Digital Conspiracy mailing list, I would host a "song of the week" each Friday. It's an idea I borrowed from the ELO mailing list with that list's owner's blessing. At the time, Barry was lurking on the Shriek mailing list and received all our communications. So, when the song "Evaporation" was featured as the Song of the Week, I decided to offer up my ideas of what the song said to me.
Evaporation
Direct light
Nothing we can see by
In turn we live by touch
Blind as our first moments
All white and flame
Become the darkness –see too much
And glows warm behind us
Casts a shadow limp as sleep
It goes on forever –or it seems that way
The words unspoken
The line uncrossed
Those dark eyes conceal their light within them
Buried secrets the flesh won’t keep
Only motion makes him and he grows more still
A stronger impulse
Sinks more deep
And the sky grows white above us
Our love a fact like any other
Like a muscle pulsing in a seabird’s wing
These welcoming doors close above us..
I hear this song and am now reading the words for the first time…..and am stricken with a feeling that can’t properly be verbalised ~ but I’ll try……
For me, ‘Evaporation’ is a tapestry of the bittersweetness of the undeniability of Love and how it so often comingles with Death or the idea of Death.
It’s the drawing into something else as the origination dissipates…becoming and unbecoming simultaneously. A love that kills the self by letting the adored one inside the essence of you, making you more whole than ever imagined, but releasing all that you are into everything. Light within the deepest Dark, a blinding shelter ~ content with silence since touch is the most intimate and honest tongue, and one needs no other sense in the arms of desire. The spark of Life in the stillness. Something so extreme that it transforms into its own opposite and, in so doing, neither polarity exists but in the other.
The ascent of joy into the realm of death as defined by passion (la petite mort ~ the infamous ‘little death’) ~ a succumbing to the natural proclivity for union and the immersion of self in another ~ there’s no choice but for us to love and release and die in order to love again. It’s as certain as a bird will take flight.
Favourite line from the song: Those dark eyes conceal their light within them, Buried secrets the flesh won’t keep.
The next day I had a letter from Barry telling me that it was really nice that someone 'gets it' sometimes. He then proceeded to tell me the story of "Evaporation," which I later put up on Shriekback.com.
So yeah. This is where my mind is today.
Of course, I'm speaking of Barry Andrews. I'm proud to say I've never asked him what a song means, not because I haven't wanted to; rather, I was just too cowardly. When I was still maintaining the Shriekback Digital Conspiracy mailing list, I would host a "song of the week" each Friday. It's an idea I borrowed from the ELO mailing list with that list's owner's blessing. At the time, Barry was lurking on the Shriek mailing list and received all our communications. So, when the song "Evaporation" was featured as the Song of the Week, I decided to offer up my ideas of what the song said to me.
Evaporation
Direct light
Nothing we can see by
In turn we live by touch
Blind as our first moments
All white and flame
Become the darkness –see too much
And glows warm behind us
Casts a shadow limp as sleep
It goes on forever –or it seems that way
The words unspoken
The line uncrossed
Those dark eyes conceal their light within them
Buried secrets the flesh won’t keep
Only motion makes him and he grows more still
A stronger impulse
Sinks more deep
And the sky grows white above us
Our love a fact like any other
Like a muscle pulsing in a seabird’s wing
These welcoming doors close above us..
I hear this song and am now reading the words for the first time…..and am stricken with a feeling that can’t properly be verbalised ~ but I’ll try……
For me, ‘Evaporation’ is a tapestry of the bittersweetness of the undeniability of Love and how it so often comingles with Death or the idea of Death.
It’s the drawing into something else as the origination dissipates…becoming and unbecoming simultaneously. A love that kills the self by letting the adored one inside the essence of you, making you more whole than ever imagined, but releasing all that you are into everything. Light within the deepest Dark, a blinding shelter ~ content with silence since touch is the most intimate and honest tongue, and one needs no other sense in the arms of desire. The spark of Life in the stillness. Something so extreme that it transforms into its own opposite and, in so doing, neither polarity exists but in the other.
The ascent of joy into the realm of death as defined by passion (la petite mort ~ the infamous ‘little death’) ~ a succumbing to the natural proclivity for union and the immersion of self in another ~ there’s no choice but for us to love and release and die in order to love again. It’s as certain as a bird will take flight.
Favourite line from the song: Those dark eyes conceal their light within them, Buried secrets the flesh won’t keep.
The next day I had a letter from Barry telling me that it was really nice that someone 'gets it' sometimes. He then proceeded to tell me the story of "Evaporation," which I later put up on Shriekback.com.
It was 82 and Viv and I were living at Burghley Rd (Carl and Jo upstairs).
The basement was inhabited by Mr. Paul Scrivens (a very old man indeed - with an old man's name - a watchmaker and heavy smoker). Mr. Scrivens had been finally moved out to some place where they could keep an eye on the poor old sod. He'd started pissing on the bedroom floor because his legs were too dicky to make it to the toilet down the corridor. Viv - a keen collector-of-things - wanted to get down there upon his leaving and I was curious about his set-up down there. Neither of us was disappointed: there were many objects recalling Paul's non Old-Bloke past - long locks of his ex-wife's hair laid on the mantelpiece - a book of Shelley with a sexy (for 1940) dedication..all his watchmaking gear - he was a skilled geezer - oh loads of stuff. The local squatters kept up a steady ant-like procession through the back windows for a week or so after. We got some nice little crystal bottles; a few books. And there he was gone. He was precarious at the time - there's no way he's still alive. It was a moment of Looking at It: Death. Love. Loss. All that. I had a night job dismantling shelves up in Hendon and while Viv slept and I organised myself to go to work at midnight I stooped over the cassette machine playing the groove from the studio (working title: 'quizzical little bastards' because we thought the toms sounded like curious prairie dogs in a wildlife doco) and I wrote 'Evaporation' full of Mr. Scrivens' life and death and lost lovers - the huge vacuum beneath us in his vacated flat, which you couldn't help but picture yourself in at some much later date. The night, the empty rooms - only dust and rubbish left, really now. It doesn't take long to disappear. That was it.
I'm still really pleased with that tune ~
Lee Perry was the presiding spirit, of course (Dub that you can't dance to - you can only lie down to) and the tune could be Ecclesiastical or Celtic - killer combination. And the smouldering vocoder which flickers around the voice and allows me to sing a melody I'd otherwise be embarrassed to sing. We played it to Groucho Smykle, the Reggae producer who did Jam Science and he turned it up on the big speakers at Island so you could really feel Dave's huge bass-line (all the huger for being so gentle) and he said approvingly 'dis ya Bad Music'. Bad and Sad, I thought. That's the human condition for you..
So yeah. This is where my mind is today.
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 02:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 02:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 04:39 pm (UTC)you really are a unique and special Soul to get this - and, most importantly, to be able in your own way to find some satisfaction in it!
no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 05:20 pm (UTC)not to startle you, but...
Date: 2005-08-03 05:29 pm (UTC)Re: not to startle you, but...
Date: 2005-08-03 05:32 pm (UTC)Re: not to startle you, but...
Date: 2005-08-03 05:44 pm (UTC)You are leaving the Pit
you are looking towards other career possibilities
you are going to England for the first time, which is a revelation in and of itself
something major and painful happened recently, this you alluded to in a prior post, I have a feeling it was a necessary shift, but a Tower Tarot card traumatic shift
and you are going to be meeting someone whom you have a fascination and deep mysterious fear for. (I have a feeling you will not be the same after this meeting, but that will on the whole be a good thing.)
Geeze girl! You run towards things that frighten mere mortals, not away from them! I wish I had half of your ovarios, but truth be told, I'm not even sure where I would begin.
Re: not to startle you, but...
Date: 2005-08-03 05:50 pm (UTC)I'm going to hide under a small rock now.
Re: not to startle you, but...
Date: 2005-08-03 05:56 pm (UTC)dang
Re: not to startle you, but...
Date: 2005-08-03 08:24 pm (UTC)I think Marta's right (omg, did I just say that???)
You're going to do something major in your life!
(like maybe calling me.*g*)
no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 05:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 05:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-03 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-08-08 11:50 pm (UTC)