Het aantal goede songs over de impact van de Aidsepidemie van de jaren ’80 en ’90 kan gemakkelijk op de vingers van één hand worden geteld. Simon Fisher-Turner’s soundtrack van Derek Jarman’s The Garden en Lou Reed’s Halloween Parade en dan heb je het wat mij betreft ook wel zo ongeveer gehad. Plus natuurlijk dit juweeltje van Kitchens of Distinction. Songschrijver Patrick Fitzgerald was openlijk gay, iets waarmee je 30 jaar geleden in Engeland geen vrienden maakte. Hier gedenkt hij aan de hand van foto’s en herinneringen de vrienden die de epidemie niet hebben overleefd.
[Verse 1]Here are several pictures and pictures mean the past
Here’s a pretty desert scene and here a sea of grass
Likely orchards and vacant lots, big men grinning and holding hands
All the time the season’s win and everything is lost
All the times that made the world are slipping into forgetting
How are you and what did you do before you started thinking?
I am fine and shaky still, this side of things gets clearer
[Chorus]I’ll never have the time to suffer my easy past
I’ll never have a camera to disturb my rosy past
I’ll never have a sober night whilst the drink lasts
[Verse 2]Here is a picture, I guess he’s probably dead
Here’s another picture, the fantastic three off their heads
Ignore this Western trip, little thing, there’s so many other ideas
I live in the songlines of boys from all over the world
[Pre-Chorus]Something said’s been said before and here I am repeating
That all the times that made my world cannot be forgotten
And I’ll never have a camera to keep these lies
[Chorus]Here am I sitting in the sun with burning skin and a big red book
And here are you on holiday, I wonder if you’d still look that way
I could forget
Things so quickly
But they’re always here
And I cannot throw
Memories away
Here comes the sickler
With his brand new polaroids
[Instrumental Break]
[Outro]Here are several pictures and pictures mean the past
Here I go into fogginess, all my past destroyed
Uitgelichte afbeelding: By John Hill – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18249713
