Fish, "View from the Hill"

My sense of nostalgia, spurred on by the nipping of the Black Dog, will often make it difficult for me to appreciate memories. I immediately see the worst in them, and I instinctively wish to turn away.

I once didn't touch a fine musical instrument, or even look at it, for many years, on account of the emotional baggage that went with it. I have books, CD's, and DVD's on my shelves I cannot bring myself to read, listen to, or watch to this very day.

Even as my thinking would slowly but surely improve, this problem only seemed to get worse, as if some force was pushing back at me. A part of me, I suppose, wished to remain miserable and close my eyes to anything involving pain. 

It may take some time to embrace the fact that both the pain and the pleasure are necessary parts of life, as well as necessary means to finding peace and joy. 

I have an especially pleasant recollection of spending a summer in Austria with the girl I thought would be my best friend forever. She flew in a few weeks after I did, and I felt like my heart would explode when I met her at the airport in Graz. I felt even more twitterpated when I saw that she had brought along recent tapes I had made for her, including this album by Fish, who had just recently departed from my favorite band, Marillion. 

And so, like foolish kids, we listened to it together, over and over, often splitting the headphones, as kids will still do to this day. We would loudly sing out lines from it together, full of melodrama, and then laugh at one another. These were surely the best of times. 

My usefulness to her passed within the next year or so, and then the album sat ignored for almost twenty years. I constantly listened to everything else by Marillion or by Fish, but not this record. It just hurt too much. It's a shame, because it's probably his best work. 

And the other day I dusted it off, and I finally played it again. Was it agonizing? Hell, yes. Was to worth it? Absolutely. 

I had not really grasped the meaning of this song back then, and I now saw how it would have helped me not to have neglected it. It actually contains the gist of most everything I have struggled to come to terms with over the years. 

We are all sold an image, an ideal of a perfect life, and we usually fall for it, hook, line, and sinker. The illusions of success defined by power, wealth, and fame are what drive us, and we are then willing to abandon everything else in pursuit of this fantasy. 

"It will all be better when I get this, or win that, or achieve whatever I have been told is worth achieving."

And in the meantime, we forget justice, we forget compassion, we forget love. We are told to climb the hill, and to push everyone else aside, even to trample on them, and then we will see further. 

A friend once described the song better than I can: "You work your ass off to make money, and you spend the money to buy crap, and you make a giant hill of the crap. Then you stand up on your hill, having pissed on the people down below, and you suddenly have the nagging sense that you just wasted an entire life to see further, when all you needed was to see deeper."

At the age of twenty, I thought it was a great song. At the age of forty, it is now a profound song. Did it describe all of my own foolishness, years before I did any of it? Yes, it most certainly did. 

Written in 7/2010

Fish, "View from the Hill" from Vigil in a Wilderness of Mirrors (1990)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkdMCo4Nf3Q

You sit and think that everything is coming up roses
But you can't see the weeds that entangle your feet
You can't see the wood for the trees 'cause the forest is burning
And you say it's the smoke in your eyes that's making you cry

They sold you the view from a hill
They told you that the view from the hill would be
Further than you have ever seen before
They sold you the view from a hill
They sold you the view from a hill

You were a dancer and a chancer, a poet and a fool
To the royalty of mayhem you were breaking all the rules
Your decadence outstanding, your hopes flying high
One eye looking over your shoulder, one eye on the hill

You used to say you were scared of heights, you said you got dizzy
You said you didn't like your feet being too far off the ground
But they said that up there you'd find the air would be clearer
Promised you more space to move and more room to breathe

They sold you the view from a hill
They told you that the view from the hill
Is further than you'd ever seen before

You were holding out forever, thought they'd never turn your mind
Your ideals they were higher than you ever could have climbed
We thought they couldn't buy you, that the price would be too high
That the riches there on offer they just wouldn't turn your eyes
But your conscience it was locked up in the prisons of your schemes
Your judgment it was blinded by your visions and your dreams
Praying and hoping that the view from the hill
Is wider than you've ever seen before
For the view from the hill we held our heads so high (smell the roses)

All the loved ones that you lied to are strangers left behind
All the ones that really mattered well you stood on as you climbed
You were holding out forever for your fathers and your peers
Holding out for everyone that ever walked in here
The edge was inside and you rode it all the way
You were playing the games that you learned yesterday
Hanging around like a fool with a name
You are holding your place for the view, the view from the hill

They sold you a view from a hill
Took it all for a view from a hill
And you find the views no further than you've seen before

They sold you the view from a hill

They sold you the view from a hill
And you stood and took the view from the hill

It's simply coming up roses