HARD UP

Spain, Montemar. March 2002. A sizable three bedroom apartment with marble floors, a balcony and Egyptian heiroglphyics on the wall. The day is bright and warm. It is the morning and the sky is not entirely blue and clear as it usually is in this land of 300 days of sunshine a year. There is a mottled effect that is caused by the diffracted light from clouds that look like they are made of cotton wool, but have been stretched out so thin that every fibre of cotton is visable individually.

There is the sound of music. Modern neo – soul from Philadelphia. Jill Scott In Love. Sitting behind A vintage 1980s Yamaha DX-7 is Me! The sound is set to elec piano 1. I am playing along with the track and I then let it stop. There is something more interesting being found through my fingers.

A hook line that had come to me when I was running around Glastonbury Festival in the year 2000. The sun was beating down on me and I was on way to the main stage along the main concourse where the noodle bars are and the Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream and Beer Tents. In the distance on top of the hill I notice the 10 ft metal fence erected to keep out those without tickets. I was in love or was certainly in the process of falling… She was still hung up on last years love, but we were already very close. I was not inside her heart yet and the hard metal fence made me think of the barrier that I was perceiving around this girl. I imagined I was one of thousands “HARD UP, STUCK ON THE OUTSIDE” (of the fence with no money, or ticket) or just me STUCK ON THE OUTSIDE OF YOUR LOVE. I wrote the idea down in my note book thinking how much that sounded like SIMPLY RED!!

Almost two years later and I am now living on my own in Spain. I fell in love and she broke my heart. BUT now there was someone new, someone who inspired me in ways that I had long forgotten. I was wounded, but she was a soothing balm. We related well and had been hanging out since that first night of long conversation in Grey Friars Bobby. She phoned me and she seems down. We get together and she says she has broken up with her long term boyfriend. I decide she needs some cheering up so thanks to an unseasonably good day in Edinburgh we go and get my MG Midget Sports car from Marchmont and drive out to Gullan Bay. Here we walk on the beach and watch the sunset. And we kiss. It is tender and heartfelt. She reaches out for me and once her initial resistance ebbs away she gets deeply into it. The drive home is hard because we both want to just get into bed with each other. I am rubbing her leg as she sits next to me as we speed down the A1 at 70 miles an hour. She has to meet a boring work colleague for coffee and this destroys the moment. Later that night as we eat pasta that she has cooked for us we can’t quite reclaim the moment. Over he next few days we see more of each other and have fun, but still I can’t break through this barrier.

I am due to fly to Spain just as things are developing between us so there is now hundreds of miles separating us. As I sit at the DX-7 playing a neo soul inspired groove that incorporates the new harmonic ideas I have been learning from the Mark Levine book that old hook line pops into my consciousness. Without realizing it at the time I am in the same situation I had been in two years before. HARD UP STUCK ON THE OUTSIDE.

The Ex boyfriend still looming heavily in the ladies consciousness and his presence is like an uninvited observer at a private party reserved for two. I cannot penetrate this barrier for it is built from one of the most powerful foundations LOVE not yet past and not yet released. This plunges me into the philosophical doubt of the first verse. What’s the use of anything especially loving if hurt is the only end result. This is purely a supposition set up to enforce the power of the feeling of isolation that the hook line describes. I am so close yet could not be further away from the warmth of anothers love. There in body and physicality, but denied to me in mind and soul.

The next verse is less rhetorical and now strictly personal. A plea for us to come together and let go of our inhibitions and be in touch with our hearts. Let it all flow out and no longer be caught in the constant state of denial that we allow ourselves to so often wallow in. As the second chorus builds I am still accentuating this feeling of isolation.

The last verse is directly connected to the situation back in Edinburgh asking what is the use in needing the one that has now been left behind, because by doing that you are not allowing yourself to be open to the new experiences that can had with me 'MR GODDARD'. But this leads to the observation of glazed eyes that show that the body is with me, around me, but the mind is somewhere and with someone else. But does she see this reciprocated by my emotion because I am already so amazed by the beauty and soul of my new partner. So much so that it appears that I have the same detachment.

Now it is time to lay into the groove and maybe work this thing out by getting our bodies into the same rhythm!