This song in an interesting one, written as Gabriel's first single after he left Genesis following the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway tour in 1975. It shows up in roughly 67,000 movies but has a unique impact on me for various reasons. Craig Crawford got me interested in Peter Gabriel's music right about the time that I became interested in Dungeons and Dragons (again, I fault Craig and Scott). This was roughly 1982 or 1983, I think. I played D&D all the time and bought every module that my allowance would allow. I also listened to the radio constantly while this was going on giving me an encyclopedic knowledge of 1980s music and 1960s one-hit-wonders. The 1960s were considered "classic rock" in the 1980s and Elvis and the Everly Brothers were considered "Oldies". I vaguely understood from Craig that Gabriel was once in a band now fronted by Phil Collins, and thought Gabriel was perhaps the oddest person I had ever encountered. I submit the video for "Shock the Monkey" as proof.
I had heard Solsbury Hill several times before 1990, but it never resonated until that year. For what reasons I do not know. My Dad left (of his own steam or mine or Mom's is a bit of conjecture by all parties) to live with another woman whom I did not know existed until he died in 2001. I am not sure what happened to him after he left us. I saw him for brief periods over the next 7 years, usually turning the other way when I saw him in a bar downtown. In 1990 I felt like I was going somewhere. I was in a bunch of plays, I was popular at school and doing reasonably well (for me a 3.0 GPA was reasonably well) and I had my own basement at my folks house.
This lead to screenings of classic films: Evil Dead and Evil Dead II were favorites. There was D&D every Sunday at Craig's house which would continue for the next 6 or 7 years. I was enjoying myself capitally. I went on dates....with actual girls! On June 9 I went out with a young woman to see the horrific horror film The Guardian and had pizza; she drove a green Toyota and has not gotten rid of me since.
In the back of my head, I knew all of the successes of the year to be built on sand. This is the great problem with my emotional and mental state: I do not deserve success and it will soon be taken away because of my attitude/real ability/exposure as a complete and absolute fraud. I guess this song gets at the heart of that voice that started whispering in my ears in the 1980s and was roaring at the top of its lungs in 2007.
It was like the quiet conversation and coughing during the break between movements when I was a teenager. As my time of my quitting at Iowa in 1996 it was a moderate conversation that I could talk over. I imagined that I made the right choice and trusted myself. Even though things began to work out slowly the voices became more insistent and demanding that I did not know myself.
I did not believe the information/I just had to trust imagination
By 2007 that voice and noise was the cosmic thump that drowned out all else. A 20 year retrogression from talkies to life as a silent film where the only accompaniment is Beriloz's Dies Irae as I just have to wait for my life and mind to fall apart.
Till I thought of what I'd say/Which connection I should cut
In 2007 I started a new job and thought the connection to the Churchillian Black Dog was cut. I never thought that the dog would bite the living hell out of me. That voice saying "everything you have, everything you've ever done or will do is a fraud. You deserve nothing" is a friend and speaks truth. It is the wolf howl on the Autumn night. The face to the world is not yours. You come to believe in a self that is not yours, a feeble and downtrodden thing who is powerless. Frederic Jameson wrote about the "dearealization" of the surrounding everyday world. Against all evidence, against all rational thought, I believe my life as a parade of failures. This is the fraud for all of us.
This song ends with these lines:
Today I don't need a replacement
I'll show them what the smile on my face meant
My heart going BOOM-BOOM-BOOM
Hey, I said
You can keep my things they've come to take me home
The thing that takes us home is belief in ourselves, however sparing it is and however irregular its visits to our doors. The things we leave behind in those moments are what keep us from being ourselves.
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