A(nother) confession

After an earlier post on my (una)shamed man crush, I wanted to redress the balance: I have a woman-crush too (there you go – you can relax now, dad). It's with a woman who on our first 'meeting' showed herself to be both singer and siren; magician and mistress; wizard and witch. I am of course talking about the captivating Florence Welch, of Florence and the Machine fame.

This fateful meeting happened some 2/2 and a half years ago now, and so it is back to the days of iPhone 3 and of the iPod touch where I need to take you to express the full extent of this terrible temptress' magic...*cue mirage style fade out*...

September blue were the skies. Friends were my company. Hop Farm, Kent was the venue. The beer and the sun poured over us in those clear, long-lasting, sun-stretching hours as we sang and swayed and sighed to the sauntering summer days effortless beeps and blips and beats. Serenity.  

As anyone who’s been to Hop Farm before knows, the music had been questionable, but we weren’t there for music. We were there for fun. For each other. For stories to tell. For the exuberance of life that the summer sun sweetens for us all to savour. Eireann, Kirst-face, ‘ughesy, Stu and me…just there for kicks and anything else that might happen along the way. For ‘festival’.

Then, at the height of the afternoon heat, ‘she’ stepped on stage. Wistfully wondering wherever she pleased…gliding and floating and musing, blissfully unawares of the crowd who’s eyes were all trained and transfixed on her…a name few had heard of before, but that all would remember thereafter. And then she sang. The most angelic and haunting and echoing notes we’d heard…and were to hear…and when those notes landed, and when her voice departed her mouth, similarly we too – each and every one of us took leave of our own selves...a departure of autonomy where you're given up to something wholly more captivating than self-awareness...to the moment and to the idea of simply 'being'...and so we stood – well that is to say that we could've been standing; for all I knew we were flying...flying towards verdant, velveteen visions yet undreamed of – and when her feet danced, our bodies followed in unthinking, unquestioning synchronicity – and when her voice rose higher, our souls rose even higher still until we were watching the first mountaintop festival...and so she continued to bedazzle bamboozle and befuddle from that (insalubrious) stage – she single-handedly dictated our every move, movement or motion for that hour…and to this day I can’t hear those chiming bells without thinking about the British belle herself, sun drenched and sun smiled…and I think that anyone who can melt hearts, move feet and encourage people to lose themselves in the magic of music so unwittingly, is a true artist indeed…and I can’t say any more than this. She wooed me, and she wowed us all. And that is worthy of my admiration, at the very least…

Just a thought…