She Fails To Cry Your Name
I can hear, from the distance, Beth Orton’s (wonderful) “She Cries Your Name” and I’m reminded of that time in my life, when the single came out in the middle of all the other whirlwind and wonder that was happening. It was the final year of my bachelors degree in art school, and despite that theoretically being the year when I should’ve buckled down and started working my ass off, the opposite happened; the idea of “free study” (In other words, you manage your own time as opposed to being given set projects, with the understanding that you’ll do so responsibly and have a strong body of work to show at the end of the year) somehow translating in my head into the potential to just do whatever seemed like a good idea at the time. Including, at one point, going to London for a week with my best friend, and staying at his brother’s apartment.
There was, I think, some rationale at the time as to why this was a good idea. I can’t remember what it was, which is always a sign that it wasn’t the real reason why we’d gone down there, and to be honest, all I really remember about the trip was going to the Good Mixer (or some Camden pub, but I’m pretty sure it was the Mixer, famed at that point as the birthplace of Britpop), doing lots of sketches and taking lots of photographs, lazily lying around the apartment, and the way that the best friend’s brother’s girlfriend couldn’t pronounce my name. Oh, and being on a tube train across from Beth Orton.
The worst part about that last bit was that I didn’t realize it was Beth Orton in time. I spent most of the time looking at her, knowing that she was familiar for some reason, but not remembering where I knew her from. I remember her expression as she realized what I was doing, going from confusion to bemusement to being kind of pissed off (This was before her first solo album had come out, and she wasn’t really famous as such; I’d actually met her before, outside of a Red Snapper gig when she was singing with them, but it was one of those embarrassing “Oh you’re really cute I can’t talk to you oh what is that language I’m supposed to know oh yeah English” moments that I’d rather not remember, and was glad that she clearly didn’t). By the time I did remember who she was, she was getting off the train. I remember thinking at the time that it was a missed opportunity, but also being relieved.
Months later, her album came out and was kind of shit. I felt slightly better about not remember who she was earlier, then.
