The song is a lot of things really. Like the rest of the album, its definitely a scene. A vivid location. But its also a vague memory of a dream, a feeling, and a chain of events. It’s a man and a fishing boat, lost at sea.
I wrote it at a time when I was feeling especially lost and directionless. A comfortable twenty something, ill-content with everything and scrambling to figure out who I was and where I wanted to be. The lighthouse came to represent a clear and unwavering directionality, something I seriously lacked.
‘Be my light, ‘cos I’m coming in half blind’
Theres definitely fear in that lyric. Fear of the unknown - apprehension for what’s coming. The sea does a great job of concealing things like massive rocks and creatures and undercurrents. Its always felt dangerous and foreboding to me, especially as a city boy. I suppose thats what drove me to a sea setting - it felt applicable to my anxieties about life.
‘And I don’t know, I’ve never seen these shores’
The cry for guidance comes pretty quick.
‘I’m calling out, as the waves crash all around’
I guess the waves are a cheap metaphor about adulthood - trying to stay true to some bearing, but being persistently knocked off course by bills, jobs, conventions, expectations etc. All the while fearful of some seismic event, that will eventually come and throw you overboard.
‘A doppler shift, and I’m helpless and adrift’
In a way, the lighthouse actually ends up being the downfall of this character. The expectations that came with it proved too much, and shifted his focus from the very real threats around.
The scene quickly turns subsurface. A floating, motionless character, refracting the lighthouse light like a prism, preserved in the dense sea. The pieces of the capsized wreck swirling around.
‘Salt and brine, frozen in time, I’m refracting this light’
Memories of life swim by like a luminous shoal of fish as he floats, along with doubts as to whether he really was stricken/destined to float in this purgatory state, or whether he just didn’t kick his legs hard enough.
‘On port side, life goes by, did you rise, did you try…’
All in all, its a song about expectations. How we frame what we strive for. What we ultimately achieve. How we fall. And most importantly, how we react.
lyrics
Be my light, coz i’m coming in half blind,
And I don’t know, I’ve never seen these shores,
I’m calling out, as the waves crash all around,
A doppler shift, and I’m helpless and adrift.
But I let it go, too right, I’ve been here all my life,
I’ve seen it from, inside, I watched this all capsize,
Salt and brine, frozen in time, I’m refracting this light,
On port side, life goes by, did you rise, did you try,
No I let it go, too right, I’ve been here all my life,
I’ve seen it from, inside, I watched this all capsize,
I feel theres something missing. I hope i’m right.
i fear I’m so much older than my years gone by.
I feel theres something missing. I hope i’m right.
credits
from Sistine Dreams,
track released November 28, 1993
Written and produced by Alf Whitby
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