1991_0102 : Catch

Description

This song was developed over a very long time. It started out in 1984 as the musical accompaniment to the poem “Petal Birds” by Maureen O’Connor, when she called me up and asked me to help her with a high school music assignment. She had to write a song for her class and play it to all the nuns of Notre Dame Girls School.

I asked her what she needed, and she reminded me that I had written some music for “Petal Birds” when we had been going out together. I couldn’t play the original music; it just wasn’t coherent enough. I decided to quickly write a new tune, which I then decided was too good to give away, but which I did all the same. My favorite part was the fade-out section, which I then relocated in an early version of Reverence years later.

When I gave her the tape, it was the night before her assignment was due. She told me the next day that she didn’t even have a chance to listen to it before it got played in class; that she had to improvise singing the words to it, even though I had put down a synth melody to match the lead line. She was very excited and impressed about it; I think her class were more or less speechless, as most of them had not done the assignment.

I then picked it up where I had left it off, in September ’90, undergoing a complete transformation during a period when I had a back injury and was confined to bed for a week, listening to Devine & Statton, Intemporelle by Isabelle Antena, and Nue au Soleil by Ludus (perhaps sparked by the photographic resemblance of Linder to Maureen?).

The new lyrics were put together while watching the movie “Equus”; inspired by Jenny Agutter’s performance, and charming beauty. The music came together December 8, 1990, while I was tailoring some songs for potential studio work at Entourage. The most recent lyrical revisions came up in July ’91, during my work on “Mr. Petrified Forrest.”