Eyre Lines

A recent “Nakedly Examined Music” podcast featuring Steve Hackett threw me into a voyage of discovery into albums by members of Genesis other than those from the goup itself, and this resulted in me listening to “The Living Years” from Mike and the Mechanics, the eponymous Mike being Mike Rutherford, the Genesis bassist.

When that came out, it seems in 1988, I noted it as something I liked, but not much more than that. In 1988, however, I still had a full complement of parents (Mr. Rutherford wrote that after losing his father). My father died in 2001, my mother in 2014, and at this point the song really stikes home forcibly.

I definitely didn’t spend enough time talking with my father, in particular about religion and spirituality, but also about his immense life experience. I fancy he’d been somewhat traumatised by having an evangelical atheist son (as I was from around 9 to 14 years old) and was reluctant to argue, though actually there was huge room for discussion rather than argument during at least the last 10-15 years of his life. But I was busy, and preoccupied, and the time passed me by. I spent more time with my mother after that, but again only had about a year after I emerged from the depths of depression and was sensibly able to listen to her at length, and it wasn’t enough.

So, in the words of the song:-
Say it loud (say it loud), say it clear (oh say it clear)
You can listen as well as you hear
It’s too late (it’s too late) when we die (oh when we die)
To admit we don’t see eye to eye

If you’re lucky enough still to have parents, go and talk to them.