Single
Hearts Echo
24 August 2014
Hearts Echo - Inspired by Albert György's sculpture Melancholy, beside Lake Geneva, Switzerland. Some moments in life stay with us forever. Sometimes we come across something so unexpected, yet so deeply connected to our own experiences, that it stops us in our tracks. For me, that moment happened beside Lake Geneva. I lost my wife in December 2010. In 2013, I found myself in Geneva, where I came across a sculpture by the artist Albert György called Melancholy. It was a seated figure, stooped forwards, with an enormous hollow space through its chest. I stood looking at it, and something inside me gave way. I sat there next to it for around two hours, misty-eyed, unable to take myself away from what I was feeling/seeing. There was something about that empty space that reached me in a way almost nothing else had since losing my wife. It was as though someone had taken the feelings I had been carrying inside me and given them a physical form. The emptiness. The weight of loss. The silence that follows when someone who was such a huge part of your life is no longer there. I didn't need anyone to explain the sculpture to me. I understood it through what I was feeling. Yet, as I sat there, I began to see something else. Despite the enormous hole through its body, the figure was still there. Still holding its shape. Still existing around the emptiness. That image stayed with me; it became the inspiration for Hearts Echo poem in 2014, until I transformed it later to song in 2024. The song is about the hollow space that grief can leave behind, but also about discovering that life continues around that space. We carry our memories, our sadness and our love with us. The repeated words, “Yet in this stillness, there's a grace,” reflect that quieter understanding. Grief doesn't simply disappear, and the love we have for someone doesn't disappear with it. We learn to carry both. “Through hollow pain, I come to see, even in grief, there's space to be.” Whenever I think of that sculpture beside Lake Geneva, I remember those two hours, the tears in my eyes, and the extraordinary feeling of seeing my own grief reflected in a work of art. Hearts Echo is my musical reflection on that moment.
Lyrics
A hollow frame of steel and stone, Bent by the grief I call my own. In Gyorgy's work, I find my face, A quiet void, an empty space. Where once was light, now shadows fall, A heart undone, consumed by all. Each breath I take, a heavy sigh, As memories slowly drift and die. The weight of loss, too deep to bear, It lingers, shapeless in the air. Like that sculpture, I bend, I break, A vessel filled with silent ache. Yet in this stillness, there's a grace, A deeper truth that holds its place. Through hollow pain, I come to see, Even in grief, there's space to be. Yet in this stillness, there's a grace, Yet in this stillness, there's a grace, Yet in this stillness, there's a grace, A deeper truth. Through hollow pain, I come to see, Even in grief, there's space to be. Ohhhh ohhhhh Hearts Echo…