I rarely buy new albums these days. Three, plus an EP, in the past 18 months, to be precise. But where I’m prepared to do so unquestioningly, I realise the importance of what I’m investing in.

Should Keane top the charts with Strangeland later today, they will swiftly follow Coldplay (and another of my dear charges, Erasure) into an exclusive list of British bands to have achieved a fifth consecutive number one album.

Reviewers, on the whole, have been less than impressed, however. And, funnily enough, I see myself drawn to defend Keane in a similar way to the 80s bands that I admire so much.

What it all says, to my eye – and the same is surely true of academia – is that reviewing often says more about the state of criticism itself than the subject at hand.

Uncanny Symmetry

Keane swung into new territory following two highly successful early albums. Moderating the Scissor Sisters’ more gregarious lead, Keane’s Perfect Symmetry joined The Killers in a revisionist 80s revival in 2008, with Night Train following two years later. Mainstream fans were aghast, but held on, as if odium were the only thing more pleasurable than departure.

And critical reception of Keane also wavered disproportionately around this lateral shift. To some, it was a ghastly move – over-experimental and over-tainted by the conceptual leanings of Muse and Radiohead. To others, it added an edge and eclecticism to an otherwise characterless plateau.

One reviewer described Night Train as a ‘stench’ that Strangeland only partly disperses. But was it really such a major refashioning? The whole ‘dipping in and out of form’ idea is often rather vacuous – especially when chart positions don’t suggest a major collapse.

Certainly, ‘Spiralling’ is the radical lurch of Perfect Symmetry (2008), with its coarser synth-riffs and more unusual electronic slants. But the title track keeps the classic piano-rock pulse in close embrace, while the pleading ballad ‘You Don’t See Me’, panned by critics, forms a sumptuous companion piece for the haunting ‘She Has No Time’ from the first Hopes and Fears album. In other words, it’s a small proportion of the album that spearheads the alleged revolution.

Night Train has a more ambitious scope of influence in its shorter span. ‘Back in Time’ sets a similarly eclectic opening tone, while smooth collaborations with K’Naan mark what would appear to be the most distinct genre shift. The greatest departure, really, is the indie pageant, with ‘Clear Skies’ leaning towards the Gorillaz, and both ‘Ishin Denshin’ and ‘Your Love’ casting a pleasing glance to the late 1980s indie/pop intersect.

But traditional Keane is never left behind. The closing track, ‘My Shadow’, is possibly the most striking single opportunity since the band’s early 2004 successes. Mature, with gripping rock dynamics, it befits the closure of an EP that’s defined by looking backwards – a band sighting the end of its own detour. I couldn’t resist using this to look backwards myself.

Different is Everything

And yet, critics now find middle-ground with Strangeland, responding nonchalantly to the band’s ‘return-to-signature’ sound. The underlying mentality, then, is one that awards more kudos for anything that attempts to be ‘different’, even if the result apparently fails, than one that aims to satisfy through the tried-and-tested.

The conclusion: that safe is too often weak. And this is where the reviewers’ curse comes in. Since when did danger ever become a prerequisite? Why have risk and radicalism become the defining criteria for critical predisposition?

Staying ‘relevant’ is a nightmare – true enough. There are many artists who survive with an ongoing hope that relevance can somehow bend to suit them. The NME has noted a radical difference between the singles and album charts in 2012.

But Keane’s flawless chart success, which reviewers of Strangeland have largely ignored, shows that their formula does have purchase. Consistency at this level owes more than to formula alone, though. In a chart that’s swinging towards younger listeners, social media trends, and so forth, it’s worth stopping to think what it is that continues to capture the imagination as tastes change.

Is it the quality of Tom Chaplin’s vocals, celebrated by Queen in 2010, but barely mentioned in writing? Is it because of the plaintive, poignant sound, threnodies to past lives and loves? Adele’s sole album of heartbreak has clearly captured the nation, but boys have deft souls too.

Home Comforts

‘Neon River’, gorgeous in title and execution, seems a drop-shot out of the lyric book of Fleetwood Mac. The femme fatale leaves for the city, glimpsing the neon lights. To look back brings the foolish feeling of naivety: of growing up, moving on, and never returning. Hesitation and separation are drenched in a weak smile, a facade of strength.

Having left my coastal home city behind nine years ago, it is still my only home. The ‘Sovereign Light Café’ is a riveting nostalgic reverie of memories on the Sussex coast. “I’m a better man now than I was that day”, the song mournfully lauds.

Don’t we all wish that we could relive the past with our painfully acquired wisdom? Retrospection and renewed respect for time are ingrained sensibilities at a time when it’s easier than ever to say or do something that we later regret.

What Keane does is turn platitude into altitude. In doing so, they develop a solipsistic musical comfort that critics will always struggle to accept, but that the rest of us, perhaps, have always privately wanted.

Off I went a few months later, in January 2011, to the most important stop of the book’s promotional tour, the Andrew Marvell Centre in Hull, to hear Nigel present on it.

Also in 2011, the Cambridge Companion to Andrew Marvell emerged. And with further co-authored work by its editors, Derek Hirst and Steven Zwicker, due imminently (referenced here), the opportunity for another composite review, or even a review article, has been a strong one. Due to various commitments, this has not yet come to pass, and it seems unlikely now that it will.

But with this site now appearing under the blog results in searches for Marvell (for which, many thanks), it has become a semi-credible platform. And this occurrence is indirectly responsible for what follows. A browse through the other blog-listed material revealed a rather provocative review of The Chameleon by Alan Altimont, an associate editor for the Andrew Marvell Society, which has prompted me to mount a defence.

A Pantheon

With more attention now given to Marvell’s involvement in the religious and political struggles of the post-Restoration decades, critical syntheses have veered away from the somewhat arbitrary label of ‘metaphysical’ poet to instead lodge Marvell in the vicinity of Milton and Dryden, albeit still as a distant shadow. Perhaps it’s the whole lack of transparency, for want of a better phrase, which has determined Marvell’s similarly indefinable critical legacy.

The term ‘chameleon’ itself, then, is a pantheon: not only of a character that delights, perplexes, rouses and frustrates in equal measure, but also of an afterlife that has always seemed incomplete. No biography or critical work has quite encompassed all of Marvell’s documented and undocumented, definable and indefinable elements.

Pierre Legouis’ 1926 Poet, Puritan, Patriot worked by phasing in biographical details to an otherwise literary study. Nicholas Murray’s 1999 World Enough & Time is a pleasant but nevertheless flat-pack biography which falls shy of capturing Marvell in his full complexity. Nicholas Von Maltzahn uncovered much in his breakthrough Andrew Marvell Chronology (2005), but that this did not emerge as a biography emphasises the terrifying nature of this feat.

The problem with Marvell is that he tests the limit of our modern standards of biography. Writing this particular life – much like Marvell’s own work, ironically – ends up just as wary of the literary mechanics of the exercise as the exercise itself. This is partly enacted by Nigel Smith’s chapter on ‘How to make a biography of Andrew Marvell’ in the new Cambridge Companion, a decidedly rare feature in such volumes. Biography outgrows itself in Marvell’s case: to the literary, the historical, and the psychological; and these require an ineffable understanding of the period to make it work.

Altimont does not dispute that Marvell requires an ambitious biography, or that there are no benefits to be gained from its author’s inimitable knowledge. And his own knowledge and aptitude are highlighted by some fascinating observations, not least the biography’s attention to the fatherly influence on Marvell at the expense of the female presence in his young life. I might raise a rueful smile that, with two sisters, two foster-sisters and a niece, I have every reason to believe in this rather acute piece of research about sexuality and attraction.

“Cobbled Together”

Altimont’s main issue is the author’s execution, which he regards as a great disappointment. “It is a shame that Smith’s narrative skills do not rise to the level of his scholarship”, he says, finding umbrage with the borrowings from the 2003 Longman edition that embellish the poems. “The result is a book that, however painstakingly researched, feels cobbled together”.

Though technique is Altimont’s ostensible complaint, his assertion that “the critical biography is flawed” almost signals an aversion to recycling at large. And yet, the editorial copy in the Longman edition often seems under-committed in its disciplined lack of critical judgement, almost as if it was initially written with biographical intent.

The Chameleon targets far beyond the immediate reaches of Marvell fanatics, and ownership of the Longman edition is never meant to be a prerequisite. Altimont is notably pessimistic about this, and lays any failure of the ambition squarely at the author’s feet. Press reviews in the UK, however, found plenty of merit in The Chameleon as popular biography, leaving little basis for such comments. The volume found its way onto the Guardian bestsellers list – no light achievement.

The Chameleon performs the gargantuan task of merging the benefits of both biography and literary corpus together, for which the specialist reader must make reasonable allowances. The point is made that there are “few startling revelations” concerning the major questions surrounding Marvell. Presumably (for they are not mentioned), these are: the remarkable volte-face between the ‘Horatian Ode’ and ‘Tom May’s Death’ in 1650; the dating of ‘The Garden’ and other lyrics at 1668 rather than 1652; and Marvell’s sexuality, including the clandestine ‘marriage’.

But what can you do, shy of making the best sense of much that is confusing, inconsistent and controvertible? Altimont himself pictures a Marvell “acting on his own inclinations so discretely that they remain as mysterious to us as they were to his contemporaries”. It would be far easier to stress privacy as a rational get-out clause. Mercifully – and bravely – Nigel never uses it as an excuse.

Say Again?

Marvell’s oeuvre is not huge, but he chose his words very carefully. Repetition, as proved by ‘chartis committere sensus’ in 1651 and 1676 and the reappearance of language from The First Anniversary in the amended ending to The Character of Holland, is neither insignificant nor coincidental. His life and works are a web of interconnectedness that often spans decades. Consequently, the questions that they raise are challenging to any chronological structure. It’s a problem that my work on Marvell and Private Lives has faced, where biography sits just beneath the surface.

Repetition, another major umbrage for Altimont, is paramount in linking divergent incidents, thoughts and lines together. A public-orientated biography of Andrew Marvell that is to reach great heights requires dense historical context. It is hardly the greatest of crimes to present this digestibly. But even as a Marvell enthusiast, repetition did not hinder my reading or insult my intelligence in any way; so the degree to which this is raised as a concern is a surprise.

Achilles’ Heel?

In fact, Altimont becomes so preoccupied by what he describes as Smith’s “stylistic Achilles’ heel” that he misses the greater issue at play – one which, I would argue, leaves Nigel’s position as a biographer more vulnerable.

Constructing a biography requires a spine of solid evidence and the support of reading between the lines. Aside from his letters and those few published works that were both signed and dateable, Marvell himself offers remarkably little. Since Nicholas McDowell, James Loxley and others have shown us the nexus of poetic echoes that abound between members of literary networks, the remarkably few echoes of Marvell that feature elsewhere in the archive suggest a determined withholding of much of his own work.

This creates numerous challenges. The difficulty of dating much of Marvell’s verse with any great certainty makes Nigel’s corroboration of poetry and biography a huge risk – one that few have called attention to – and it’s the right risk to take. The poems, for all these challenges, are evidence, whether we like this or not. N.S. does not hesitate in using them to the full. Therefore the tangential elaboration on Marvell’s poems is necessary, I would wager, because the biography dares to give them chronological context.

“With great admiration, and in friendship, and thinking of the next Marvellians”

I add the following caveat. It never escapes this blog that the recesses of my own dark and private mind have, in my humble opinion, matured much of my understanding of Marvell’s nuanced and often impenetrable work. His life and my own throw up many uncomfortable parallels. As a poet and a person, I have grown into a restrictive way of thinking that you ‘get’ Marvell through mental shades that should not be wished upon anybody. And so perhaps I leap to the defence of The Chameleon because the narrative, by and large, convincingly presents much of the poet I recognise; while the difficulties in presenting it are also familiar, and yet are overcome with great colour and accomplishment.

I’ve spent quite a lot of time marvelling (if we can forgive the pun) at the crossovers between my own personality and that of my revered poet. In the last few months, however, sad to say, I think I’ve sunk far beneath him now.

By the time Andrew Marvell turned 28 (as I recently did) in March 1649, Charles I had been executed. The regicide inspired one of the best political poems ever written, and ended up shaping a history that would define Marvell’s fascinating future career.

Private, secretive, awkward man and all, Marvell had numerous great personal qualities, none of which I could never hope to emulate. Last time around, into the spotlight went ‘confidence’, one of Marvell’s deceptive strengths. This time around, it has to be ‘resourcefulness’.

1653: ‘Character’

1653 is a fascinating year in the life of Marvell. But there’s some essential hypothetical background to this.

It’s a possibility that during 1651, when Marvell is normally assumed to have been quietly settled at Lord Fairfax’s Nun Appleton estate, he was in fact part of an embassy sent to Holland. If so, Marvell got to see at closer quarters the tricky negotiation and brutal reality of front-line politics. The leading ambassador, Oliver St John, ‘holds the keys of Janus’, Marvell privately notes in 1651; to fail in the embassy mission would almost certainly result in war.

This brings more interest to the poem ‘The Character of Holland’, which was originally written, though not published, in early 1653.

John Milton wrote a recommendation letter in February 1653 for Marvell to join the government as his assistant. Perhaps the suggestion was made that Marvell should produce a patriotic poem to enhance the application and to demonstrate his political colours. ‘The Character of Holland’ commemorates a major British defensive scalp in the first Anglo-Dutch War which, as Marvell predicted, followed the failed embassy.

But did that poem go straight into the hands of his interviewer, John Bradshaw? I’m not so sure. Marvell did not get the role, and the poem did not end up in print.

So where next? Plan B. The poem is quite strongly in support of the ‘Commonwealth’, and of the navy. It mocks the Dutch navy crawling home with its tail between its legs.

Was this Jus Belli & Pacis; could this be
Cause why their Burgomaster of the Sea
Ram’d with Gun-powder, flaming with Brand wine,
Should raging hold his Linstock to the Mine?
While, with feign’d Treaties, they invade by stealth
Our sore new circumcised Common wealth.
Yet of his vain Attempt no more he sees
Then of Case-Butter shot and Bullet-Cheese.
And the torn Navy stagger’d with him home,
While the Sea laught it self into a foam…

It’s quite possibly a ‘Rump’ poem, which could have been advanced directly to the parliamentary body. But in April, Cromwell disbanded the Rump to later replace it with the Barebones Parliament. Perhaps the window of opportunity slammed shut on Marvell before the chance had arisen to opportunistically promote his wares before the Republic. And that left plan C, Cromwell – perhaps the most unlikely of associates at that time.

But Marvell is not deterred. Later in 1653, Marvell ended up as tutor to William Dutton through the arrangement of Cromwell and possibly Oliver St John. Marvell wrote to Cromwell, addressing him as ‘so eminent a person’, and he would then produce Latin poems on Cromwell’s behalf to accompany a portrait to the Queen of Sweden. Slick manoeuvrability set up a political career that would last until the end of his days.

Looking at Marvell’s history of ‘occasional’ poems in the four years from 1649, I’m not convinced that a personal relationship with Cromwell was ever really on the cards at the beginning of 1653.

There’s the precariously ambiguous ‘Horatian Ode’ in 1650, which accuses Cromwell of private plotting and conspiracy. There’s also the royalist ‘Tom May’s Death’ later that year. In 1651, Marvell seems far from a convinced Cromwellian. Writing privately in Latin (as best our evidence shows) he notes the horrendous situation that the reluctant ambassador, Oliver St John, has been forced into. And then there’s ‘The Character of Holland’, presumably written for the establishment that Cromwell lost patience with and then disbanded.

But what the year of 1653 exemplifies is Marvell’s great – if slightly slippery – resourcefulness.

Marvell penned what would become a familiar concern, chartis committere sensus, in 1651. There is no need to reveal yourself on paper, he constantly reminds himself. And, true to form, across the 1650s, he very rarely does.

So if, as I contend, ‘The Character of Holland’ does not leave Marvell’s hands in 1653, this is precisely what allows him to conjure up, or even just to have, a plan A, plan B, and plan C. And it’s plan C that comes off in the end.

…

The volta of this Shakesperian sonnet: I wish I knew how to capture the right formula for any resourcefulness or inspiration. It seems ironic that it could well be a slippery brand of inaction that facilitates Marvell’s progress. In ways that I cannot discuss here, it’s a sincere brand of action that butchers my own. Melancholia abounds. Thanks for reading.

My work on Marvell and Private Lives took up most of 2011, and it’s been a wonderful introspective process because the way I’ve symbiotically linked our biographies together has given me license to think as deeply and darkly as I please.

But now, just as I come to wrap this up, there’s something quite subtle which doesn’t add up.

Marvell almost always strikes the reader as the shy, demure sort. Occasionally women are abruptly visible, but otherwise they are teasingly distant, obscured, or absent. He weaves threads of complicated desire behind fastastical themes and layers of honeycombed language.

But perhaps that’s just his writing. After all, his publishing history is thin, and there’s little sign that Marvell placed a great deal of value on the majority of his own poems. Perhaps he’s even embarrassed by them. Why would that be?

Because for all his privacy, secrecy, and eloquence in writing, Marvell never seems to have lacked confidence as a person.

• He disappeared off to Europe for three to four years in the mid-1640s, and mixed with a group of royalist poets on his return.
• He worked in private and public capacities for the most important men in the land, Fairfax, Cromwell and Thurloe, throughout the 1650s.
• He sought a place in government in 1653, and eventually got it in 1657.
• He became an MP in 1659, a position he held until his death 19 years later, and he travelled on embassies with the aristocracy in the 1660s.
• Evidently, he wasn’t shy of saying (or demonstrating) anything, home or abroad.

Perhaps he’s like a slightly more anonymous Tom Watson. [The January 2^nd tract reminds me of Marvell in prose. If you make a stand, you’re fair game - especially if you’ve got skeletons.]

There are obviously reasons for his intense privacy and secrecy, but a lack of confidence isn’t one of them. Back in the day, I imagined Marvell and Fairfax as a socially awkward friendship; one that communicated more in writing than it did in voice – MSN style. But there’s presumably plenty of substance to it. Marvell writes about landmarks within the vicinity of the Nun Appleton estate that he must surely have seen himself.

The connection between land and self in Marvell’s verse assumes, to a degree, that Marvell knew the character of Fairfax well enough to formulate the epic Upon Appleton House with the presence and power that it eventually assumed.

This confidence is where our connection appears to end.

Confidence is a flighty and fickle abstract entity. Where it comes from and what governs it are personal mysteries that I cannot begin to fathom accurately. Occasionally, if we’re fortunate, we recognise chains, of people and places, that bring and maintain positivity.

But ‘confidence’ doggedly eludes me. It shows its glaring absence in such a way that lets me witness it, like viewing treasures through a window.

It’s confusing, because I’ve been the exhibitionist in my time: singing, dancing, featuring on a DVD, performing a lead role, speaking on radio, and even compering a three-hour show. And yet, they’re all just day-release from prison, figuratively speaking. The net is closing back in.

• Three months ago, I spotted a tremendous opportunity that would have presented me with a prestigious international client. I didn’t take it.
• Last month, I offered to write up minutes of an event I attended concerning internal university politics. I didn’t send them.
• Last week, I was invited to do this class again. It’s already prepared, with no travel involved and good money. I’ve turned it down.
• Last night, I left a good crowd after just one hour. A house-party invite tomorrow has been declined too.

Crowds, communication, couples, are all difficult at the moment. It’s a place of increasing insularity and deterioration that makes me less comfortable all the time. It’s accepted, though, because the damage from last year warrants whatever defence mechanisms my psyche commands. Eventually, we know better than to try and defy what keeps us stable.

Willy Loman said in that wonderful play: ‘Man is not a piece of fruit’. Fruit is where we notice bruising because it’s prominent and never recovers. While a bruised apple can be thrown away, man is supposed to hang around that little bit longer, though he has to hope that his bruises will find ways to mend.

There has been talk about matchmaking for me recently. It’s deeply touching, because one suspects that’s the only hope I’ve got left, and because I don’t expect anyone else to care. Unfortunately, that method doesn’t match my copious failings. I don’t know what to say; I don’t know where to start; I don’t know how to ‘be’.

That extends digitally, too. I don’t add on Facebook now. With very rare exceptions, I wait to be added – my proof of mutuality. It’s the prime example of passivity that finds nothing but dead air and lost opportunity. I only know how to write, and under my own sovereignty. (Perhaps A.M. is looking down and nodding after all.)

But here’s the deal. (It’s not a nice thing to write, but I do so with composite calm.) After November’s catastrophe, the thought of me being attractive to anyone is so far away that I’ll take whatever measures I need to avoid adding further proof to the mountainous stockpile. We should base our lives on reward for effort; not punishment for effort.

Confidence
Is a great seed
Planted
In a great need.

I spent December wanting to stay out, drink, and not come home. Now, I’d rather not drink and just be home alone. Dreams of being a sociable, appealing, decent being have to be shelved for the moment. I recoil to my garret, as Marvell always did, consoled that keeping myself away is doing less harm than good.

The gorgeous secluded music of Crazyshow. I’m dedicating this post to a lovely lady in the US whose courage in speaking from the heart about difficult subjects inspires me to write these days when it would be so much easier and safer not to. X

Dedicated to the few who messaged on New Year’s Eve.

2011 was a story I don’t know how to tell. It’s a year that had so many structural positives, countered by surface negatives. Perhaps it’s best defined by what others have said.

Shadows

In the early summer, I was ‘strange’, ‘sick’ and ‘damaged goods’. Thanks. In the mid-summer, I was an expletive abomination. Consequently, in the late summer, I was branded a defeatist.

Victimisation does arise sometimes. Not because it is wanted – if there’s a brand of people who don’t want to be happy, this author is not one of them – but because it’s a way of dealing with the various angles of attack and the after-effects that cannot be disguised.

November showed a shy being far out of his depth. I wish it was different, but time, inexperience, grief (and so forth) all take their toll. Sometimes, all that’s needed is a little time for the right things to overwrite the wrongs; I never seem to get it.

When your back’s against the wall
That’s when you show no fear at all.
And when you’re running out of time,
That’s when you hitch your star to mine.

There’s a saying that good always comes out of bad. Desperation is not always detrimental. It can provoke change, and make things happen. In 2011 it brought new company up North, an introduction to nightlife, and a watertight relationship with my fabulous sister.

It also brought unusual decisiveness. In the late summer, out of nowhere, came a career opportunity that would involve a move to a new city. Hence, I find myself there. A cool apartment; a new life; a new chance. There’s been positives on the academic front too, doggedly defying occasional apathy. There’s some pride at making it that far, but there’s such a long way to go.

Time and Tide

The man up in the moon is shining
Good fortune down on me.

The moon is such an apposite subject for some of my favourite music. It’s mystical and distant; powerful and constant; an introvert and extrovert; a shadow and a presence. There’s something about its solitariness that’s arresting and romantic. Perhaps that’s why it captures our imagination.

Even if one has everything he desires, he can still find himself a lonely or lost being. There’s no single definition of loneliness, and no single cure. Is it because life is missing accomplishment? Is it because there’s a deep-engrained desire to want exactly what one hasn’t got, or what somebody else has got? Is it because one doesn’t make enough effort?

Or is it because, watching from up high, it genuinely is a lonely world, and the fallacy that we are all more connected than ever just spikes our expectations of ourselves until we never feel further apart? There’s something in this beautiful song about dreaming of the unattainable. I wonder if I make that a speciality.

Skies on Fire

In a solitary strike of ire, I criticised models of friendship last year, and with good reason. Why would people flatter themselves as selfless, all-encompassing, omni-sociable beings if they really couldn’t care less?

Despite this, I celebrate solid friends – real people, brilliant minds, dependable hearts – the sort that, ten years ago, I could only dream of. That is why I’m here; I believe it will be alright. Making poetry recordings for Radio Santa Cruz in 2011 was a different and amazing way to bond with people. It combined introspection, inspiration, experience and total humanity.

As a disastrous teenager, I always used to wonder how I would ever go on to become a normal person. The moves I’ve taken ever since have almost always threatened to keep me away from that, until recently. At the end of 2010 I sought further life experience. 2011 brought some, and was enriching in many ways. I could even return to Geneva and embrace the company of old.

If only I could take these slow developments (pace Prufrock) and try the last decade again, coming away with fewer failures, fewer regrets, and with stronger mental gumption. What others choose to say to me and think about me, I cannot prevent, but some more belief rather than a chilling satisfaction at watching waves crashing overhead would be a real victory.

It’s easy for belief to waiver if you’re a long-term singleton who lives alone. Work, university, home, 6/7 days a week, is a necessary way of life. For what else is there? Nunquam minus solus, quam cum solus is true and false in equal measure, but sits in the context of retirement. Last year, more and more friends became partnered up. Before too long, I will be the last. When everyone retreats into their own family life, what is left then?

I fell in love with the fabulous Green Children in the summer through this yearning track that tapped into this very vulnerability. They are everything I could only wish to be: a beautiful pair, mystical, charismatic, lyrical, and philanthropic. They have fantastical belief and an enchanting fairy-tale delicacy to their plaintive sound. They find a depth of collective longing and belonging in this ambient melodic pop. The song reflects the most intense memory of 2011 when princesses and fairy-tales emerged, then remained fantasy, and out of reach. I have such fire for positive things – Love, Life, Longevity – but it’s often made to freeze rather than burn.

Reason Why

I’m not so far away. It just still feels far away a lot of the time. There’s a very fine line sometimes between success and failure; acceptance and rejection; the possible and the impossible – a fine line that creates a chasm in reality.

And a lot of 2011 has been spent asking why, in a sporadic stream of regret and doubt. We uphold liminal boundaries of our own existence that are sometimes just too pressing and too tense. Do we not get along with ourselves better when we have less time to dwell, think to ourselves, and talk to ourselves?

So as, that Greeke Sage, seeing a Young man privately retired all alone, demanded of him what hee was doing? who answered, he was talking to himselfe. Take heed, quoth he, thou talke not with thine enemie.

Richard Brathwaite, The English Gentleman (1630)

I can only hope that viewing me is like how I view my work (a connection I’m never far away from any more). Take a little time to see beyond the awkwardness, and there might be a hint of something decent and worthwhile underneath it all.

There’s little that chills my spine more than the introduction to this song by the amazing Justin Elswick (aka Sleepthief). It’s not the perfect poignancy of Skimming Stones, but the two are intrinsically related – sibling songs. Longing and loss; absence and aftermath; the missing and the memory. Again, the title captures me. Self-sovereignty is governed by knowing. Being held in the void of uncertainty can bring the very best from us, and yet leave us in the worst predicaments.

I always think knowing is easier than not-knowing; self-questioning always leaves room for doubt. But sometimes, things happen, engrained into the fabric of life. There aren’t always reasons for everything, and actually that’s alright.

In 2012, I hope I’ll see those dearest to me treat themselves well, believe in themselves, and not blame themselves if times get tough. And if they’d like to keep visiting and sharing this little repose with me, they will forever be welcomed with open arms.