I want to thank you for releasing Live at Alexandria Palace and especially for playing those Boatman’s Call songs. I listened to that record repeatedly as a lonely, bullied and suicidal 12-year-old girl and I think I took it as some kind of a fantasy of love and all the sweet, horrible pain and adventure it would bring. I remember around that time watching an interview where you said you felt somewhat ‘disgusted’ by certain elements of that record. I could not possibly understand what you meant by it back then. Now, 20 years later, I have experienced love, pain and adventure. Listening to your Alexandria Palace versions of those songs, they are not a fantasy to me anymore. They are as real as I am in my attempts at living. What were you disgusted by back then? What do those songs mean to you now and what made you revisit them? I wish you could have seen me as a 12-year-old trying to figure out what ‘an interventionist God’ means. Thank you for bringing so much light into my life.
ELINA @ Issue no. 132