There's blood on my hands

Dear friends,

Polly Jean Harvey makes me feel like I'm ten years-old and reading Emily Brontë for the first time. Somewhere, millions* of miles away, there lived a woman and her days were blue-green and white. When she walked towards her home, she strode through wind-blown grass, purposefully, her face an unreadable mask. Inside her there was a whole other world, one where living without your life, without that which you loved was not some irrational, unsubstantiated fear, but a dead certainty.

I'm not saying this is how I wanted to live; with guys named Heathcliff screaming all over the place and hands coming through windows. But rather that I get a thrill out of that type of haunting tale, of reading and seeing it. I listen to the title track from PJ Harvey's White Chalk and it feels the same way. I'm inside a story I don't quite understand but I'm exhilarated to be there because it is just so vivid. A gossamer lament for a lost childhood from someone who sounds like they're already a ghost.


White Chalk/PJ Harvey (mp3)

Purchase White Chalk by PJ Harvey.

Love, D

* This is not intentional exaggeration. I have a very poor concept of distance. I'm not proud of my ignorance, it's just a fact.