Just recently I came back from a very difficult business trip to Dubai. Only thing I enjoyed was the view from the office, as I spent in there 12 hours daily for a full week. My journey was truly epic.
I was fighting bugs, like ancient monsters, repelling requests from other departments like raids of rogue nomads, getting through the new version of the binary for the Appstore release like it was a caravan traveling through the scorched desert.
But the sun of the desert was the sun of yesterday.
Today I am looking at the European autumn, enjoying my mate tea on my terrace. Trees flutter with their colorful leaves stroked by wind and the rhythm of their whispers seems to be synchronized with a breath of my newborn son sleeping on my chest.
I look at my son and then at these trees. Then the realization comes through.
Autumn is a parabola of the passing of time. One thing in life never changes, – it goes on.
Our biographies are like the autumn trees, full of colorful leaves – all the different colors, are like frames of a movie of our life.
Some will float away carried by the wind.
I listen to Anathema now. The band’s tone is like a voice of autumn.
Weather systems. Somehow I cannot break the connection that this band has evolved with me. The brutal anger of the Dying Wish. The desolate music of Kingdom. Terrifying
dark, Alternative 4.
These were the tunes of my early twenties. When I was seeking my spiritual path. And I was roaming through some dark woods. This was not surprisingly a time when I wrote some of my best-received horror stories. But at what cost?
Grim music of early Anathema albums was my soundtrack. I managed to scratch the surface of the abyss back then. And these dark melodies were the beacon…
Yet I managed to find my way back into the light.
And so it seems with Anathema.
If you pick their latest albums, you realize that how much they changed. There is hope now in their music. There is a reflection upon life and its purpose.
There is peace in words of such ballads as “Lightning song”.
“I found my place
In time and space
In hope and faith”
Quite a leap from the depressing lyrics of Alternative 4… ”Come and hide me from this terrible reality”. Don’t you think?
And guess what is the title of their latest album – The Optimist.
It is a hopeful feeling to see that one of your favorite bands seems to be evolving in synchronization with the development of your life.
Maybe you have to go through the darkness to find the light?
Here comes the calming voice off Lee Douglas from Anathema.
“Your world is everything you ever dreamed of
If only you can open up your mind and see
The beauty that is here”
I look at the face of my sleeping son.
So true.
—Post from “Sword in the woods” archive—