Yesterday, I made a veiled reference to two songs on my mind at the time that I wrote Between Shadow. And while they do not exactly fit in with the criteria that I’ve set out for myself in this series (non-English, strike; new to me, strike, darkwave/coldwave/synthwave, strike), I thought that I might as well include them for readers so that the reference isn’t lost on them.
Both songs are early Mission songs (The Mission UK stateside due to another band of the same name here), from shortly before I was found embracing post-goth fashions by way of a hippie-influenced variant of gothic look (1986), and started to really cut my teeth on writing poetry and lyrics that were not all doom and gloom. Wayne Hussey (Mission) and Andrew Eldritch (Sisters of Mercy) had an outsized influence on this direction at the time, and you can probably see elements of their influence to this day — perhaps entirely forgotten about when I write or read what I wrote. Ian Curtis (Joy Division) and Robert Smith (The Cure) may be front and center of my earlier writing influences, but Wayne and Andrew took over about period.
I also first got involved in alternative religions at the time, eventually finding my way into a wiccan coven, a direction actually influenced by my love at the time for the Mission’s music, but that’s another tale…
Relevant, however, is that I met my future coven sponsor at a Mission concert, and how she gave me the label, “her troubadour” because of my predilection of writing poetry and lyrics about unrequited and courtly love inspired by my obsession with this style of post-goth music, as well as my tendency to wear peasant blouses (white as well as much louder colors), oversized cotton pants and leather.
That troubadour is largely gone these days, although he sometimes slips in for a short spell. If you ignore him, he will eventually go away. It’s better that way. In fact, I recommend it.
The first song mentioned, Over the Hills and Far Away, is responsible for the lyrics fragment that I shared that reads:
Over the hills and far away
There's a place that's heaven
Where yours was the first kiss
The everlasting kiss
Other elements that inspired me at the time were the lines:
A tangled skein
of a marriage made in heaven
Oh, why did you?
Why did you let all the flowers die?
I share this part because it still embraces some of the gothic aesthetic that attracted me in the first place. There is exquisite romance, but not everything remains happy, even in paradise.
The second reference is from Bridges Burning:
War paint, misty days and dizzy faint
Keeping the faith, spinning turning
Watch the flames of bridges burning
This has less of the romantic overtones to it, but still carried the vibes and mystical feel I was aiming for at the time. And, in yesterday’s piece, served its own purpose.
I won’t pretend that these songs aged well. I happen to like them still and pull them out on occasion (although far less often than I do the Cure or Joy Division). I still think, however, that there is still some strengths that modern music could learn from in terms of capturing an audience’s imagination and in sound engineering. Too much of modern music has a sound that lacks an organic vibrancy, something I blame on 100% digital recording. And too little of it dreams of misty days and feeling dizzy faint.
As always, I appreciate you listening and reading my little stories that go along with this series.
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